He has also worked as an assistant professor at the University of Lorraine in France (2001-2002) and as a senior adviser in NORAD's evaluation department (2006-2009).

[6][7] From 2015 to 2019 he was the Research Director at the Faculty of Medicine with the academic responsibility for the first medical postdoctoral training programme in Norway.

[8][9] In 2017 he was elected a fellow and a group leader at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

As a scholar of the medical humanities, most of Engebretsen's research centres around the following questions: who is legitimized to speak on whose behalf about health, and what are the discursive mechanisms on which this legitimacy is based?

[17] In his most recent book, Rethinking Evidence in the Time of Pandemics (Cambridge University Press, 2022; co-authored with Mona Baker),[18] he demonstrates how effective story-telling can enhance the reception of medical knowledge and reduce some of the sources of resistance and misunderstanding that plague public communication about the COVID-19 pandemic and other medical emergencies.