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Lene Haakstad is a Professor and exercise researcher in Sports Medicine at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (NSSS), as well as academic chair (program manager) for instructor and personal training (PT) education at the Center for Postgraduate Education at NSSS. Professor Haakstad’s primary research field is women’s health, with particular focus on physical activity and health during pregnancy, and the effect of exercise on outcomes for the mother and the fetus. She finished her PhD thesis in 2010 (“Physical activity and weight gain in pregnant women”) and have to date 79 scientific papers/book chapters, with 30 as a first author and 25 as last author.
Professor Haakstad’s work has received national and international recognition, and she has given numerous conference presentations both nationally and internationally. She has been an expert member of the IOC consensus panel on two occasions, contributing her expertise to the areas of “Exercise and pregnancy in recreational and elite athletes” as well as “Female specific extension of IOC guidelines on reporting and recording of injury and illness.” In addition, Professor Haakstad has authored the Scandinavian guidelines for Physical Activity and Exercise during Pregnancy on two separate occasions (2017 and 2021), as well as a textbook for students in 2018 and 2023. Professor Haakstad was an invited Guest Editor for the Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health to establish a special issue on “Physical Activity During Pregnancy”, and in 2023 the special issue on Sports Nutrition for Female Athlete in the journal Nutrients. She is a regular reviewer for top journals including Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica (AOGS), Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports (SJMSS), Psychology of Sport & Exercise (PSE), European Journal of Sport Science (EJSS) and BMJ Open. In 2019, Professor Haakstad was honored with an invitation from Professor Wendy Brown to be a visiting fellow at the University of Queensland’s Centre for Research on Exercise, Physical Activity and Health.
