He has worked with rock art for more than 25 years including the 4-year PhD and a 3-year post.doc. position at the University of Oslo, Norway. Gjerde has also taken part in rock art projects funded by the Norwegian Research Council and the Swedish Research Council. He is also working on projects with the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage Research. During his work with rock art Gjerde has conducted extensive fieldwork in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and NW-Russia.

Even though Gjerde’s key focus is on research on rock art, he has also worked with cultural resource management of rock art. Gjerde has taken part in and been Project manager on large contract archaeology excavations. Gjerde’s has a profound interest in dissemination and in 2017 he received the Norwegian Researchers Associations Brain Power Award for his dissemination on rock art.