Siste publikasjoner

• Hartikainen, Elina I (2026). Narrating religious intolerance, constructing secularism: Chronotopes of raced secularism and abnormal religious violence at a parliamentary commission in Brazil. Studies in Religion. ISSN 0008-4298. doi: 10.1177/00084298261487183. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article examines how narrative chronotopes that organize state efforts to govern religion and religious violence contribute to the racialization of secularism in Brazil. Through an analysis of the chronotopes that structured conversations between legislators and invited government representatives at the Parliamentary Commission for Inquiry into Religious Intolerance convened by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro in 2021, the author shows how these narrative constructions conditioned the commission’s analysis of religious violence in the state. On one level, it produced a powerful critique of the racial organization of secularism in Brazil; on another, it construed the attacks the commission had been tasked with investigating as social aberrations that were beyond the purview of “normal” governance of religion. The end result was a consolidation of the very forms of raced secularism that the commission otherwise critiqued.

• Flikke, Rune; Salinas, Cecilia; Ciancio, Javier & Aigo, Juana (2026). Remodeling nature: Trout, borders, and the ongoing colonization of Argentine Patagonia. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. ISSN 2514-8486. doi: 10.1177/25148486261475679. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Maertens, Carolin (2026). No sacrifice. Damaged forests, protest, and the politics of denial in Germany’s energy transition. Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0802-7285. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article examines how legislative changes in Germany to accelerate its energy transition produce new forms of environmental sacrifice and local resistance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and document analysis, it traces political and administrative procedures concerned with the designation of a forest area as a wind energy priority zone and the mobilisation of a citizens’ movement. I develop two arguments. First, I conceptualise a politics of denial to describe how forests are rendered damaged and thus expendable in the context of renewable energy expansion. Unlike a «politics of equivalence» (Reinert 2018), in which environmental losses are traded off for anticipated benefits, a politics of denial obscures the sacrifice itself by representing forest as already degraded. Second, I show how citizens’ resistance to this denial draws on the historically constituted significance of landscape. For local residents, the forest is inseparable from the region’s history of extractivism and pollution, the socio-political ruptures following German reunification, and subsequent socio-ecological recovery. Its proposed destruction therefore evokes more than an environmental loss: it challenges residents’ claims to a restored environment and to their own historical trajectory. The article demonstrates how renewable energy conflicts are shaped by historically constituted relations between people, landscape, and processes of environmental transformation.

• Maertens, Carolin & Rippa, Alessandro (2026). The Pit, the Lake, and What Gets Lost in Between. American Ethnological Society: Collections.. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Geissler, Paul Wenzel; Prince, Ruth Jane; Mangesho, Peter Ernest; Biesen, Caroline Meier Zu; Tessua, Lulu & Tingira, Anitha [Vis alle 7 forfattere av denne artikkelen] (2026). 13 Precarity, Exposure, Toxicity, Evidence. I Wolf-Meyer, Matthew J.; Kitanaka, Junko & Raikhel, Eugene (Red.), Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century - Rutgers University Press. Rutgers University Press. ISSN 9781978845909. s. 217–234. doi: 10.36019/9781978845916-017. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Mapping Medical Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century provides readers with a comprehensive survey of topics, methodologies, and theories in the discipli...

• Naguib, Nefissa (2026). Out of the Blue: Indigo, The African Mediterranean, Seeds in Svalbard and Weaving in Egypt. Journal of Mediterranean Studies. ISSN 1016-3476. 34(1), s. 65–78. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Through the lens of thread and weaving, this essay reimagines the Nile, the African Mediterranean, and the Arctic Ocean, tracing the enduring journey and afterlife of indigo seeds and plants across different histories, contexts, and landscapes. The work highlights the patterns of circulation that link ancient Egyptian dyeing practices to contemporary conservation efforts at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The narrative interweaves artistic traditions and the socio- political implications of indigo, focusing on the work of Ramsis Wissa Wassef and the cultural legacies of his tapestry school. This essay analyses the complexities of indigo’s afterlives, discussing how the plant and its pigment illuminate entanglements and disentanglements across time and space. Ultimately, it envisions indigo as a medium that composes diverse narratives, inviting us to reconsider our understanding of history and place.

• Wig, Ståle (2026). Othering the state: invoking power in Cuba and beyond. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. ISSN 1359-0987. 32(2), s. 601–619. doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.70028. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Muinde, Jacinta Victoria S.; Geissler, Paul Wenzel & Prince, Ruth Jane (2026). ‘Corona is Over’: Temporalities and Material Afterlives of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Kenya. Medical Anthropology. ISSN 0145-9740. s. 18–18. doi: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2710415. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  After what most Kenyans experienced as the “end of Covid” in 2021–22, material remains of anti-epidemic measures, biological traces such as long covid, and memories of deaths persisted. While infection itself left few visible material traces, paraphernalia of its control – masks, tests, handwashing stations, and routines – proved more durable, although often losing or changing their function and meaning. This paper examines Covid-19 residues in western Kenya, their state and use, the meanings people assign, and how they disappear or sediment among leftovers of other epidemics, shaping future pathways unpredictably. We reflect on the afterlives of epidemics in Kenya and elsewhere.

• Bäckström, Daniel Mohseni Kabir; Hansen, Mette Halskov & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2026). Ecologies of Gods and States: Theogenic Soils and Forests in the Blang Mountains, China. I Hansen, Mette Halskov & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (Red.), Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. Leiden University Press. ISSN 9789087285081. s. 201–221. doi: https:/muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.uio.no/pub/293/oa_edited_volume/chapter/4305167. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This chapter traces how relations between Blang communities and their upland environment has changed with the recent arrival of the Chinese state. It begins by analyzing how the change from swidden/shifting to paddy cultivation has transformed soil fertility from being theogenic (caused by gods) to anthropogenic. It then analyzes how these changes have created competing conceptualizations of what constitutes a forest, and the resultant effects on biodiversity. The chapter then explores the underlying change in the logic of how to solve environmental problems, from a relational to a manufacturing logic. Finally, it analyzes how Blang communities’ perceived lack of ability to change these relations are related to state curtailment of the previous techniques used to create freedom of action.

• Kopf, Charline (2026). Rust and Reparations: Memory, Labor, and the Politics of Repair in Senegal’s Railway Workshop. Cultural anthropology. ISSN 0886-7356. 41(2). doi: 10.14506/ca41.2.11. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This essay examines the multivalences of repair in Senegalese railway workshops, where workers maintain and modify aging wagons from suburban and former transnational rail services, originally imported from France, and later from India and Pakistan. I trace three interrelated dimensions of repair. First, I show how repair operates as both replacement and improvisation, challenging the assumption that maintenance necessarily counteracts decay; instead, it can accelerate deterioration. Second, I analyze repair as reappropriation, focusing on workers’ “tropicalization” of foreign technologies to fit local conditions. Finally, I explore how the inevitability of failure, stemming from the machines’ inherent faults, demands creative mending and continuous perseverance. These practices generate not only new objects assembled from scrap but also narratives of West African railway workers whose engineering contributions have long been marginalized in colonial and postcolonial histories. Material patching thus becomes an act of reparation, asserting technical authorship and forging alternative histories of infrastructure, labor, and expertise.    Tënk Xët wii dafay jàngat anam yu bari yi ñuy defaraate ci atelier yu këru liggéeyukaayu saxaar yi ci Senegal. Foofu la liggéeykat yi di defaraate ba noppi di soppi wagon yu màgget yi bawoo ci sarwiisu banlieue yi ak resó transnasional yu njëkk ya te jóge France, ginnaaw ga Inde ak Pakistan. Maa ngi raññee ñetti mbir yu jëm ci defaraat gi. Li njëkk mooy, damay wone naka la defaraat gi di deme ci wuutu gi itam ci góorgóorlu gi, ak di diiŋat xalaat biy wax ni defaraat dafay xeex yàqu-yàqu; ci geneen wàll gi, mën na gaawloo yàqu gi. Ñaareel ba damay jàngat defaraat gi ni looy moomalaat sa bopp, may bàyyi xel ci «tropicalisation» xaralay bitim réew yi ciy liggéeykat yi di def ngir méngale leen ak anam yi dëkk bi di doxe. Fi may jeexalee mooy, maa ngi jàngat ni masin yi mënul ñàkka yàqoo, te bokk ci ay njuumte yu nekk ci masin yi te loolu dafay laaj xeeti defaraat yu yees ak bañ a xàddi. Jëf yooyu duñu yam ci defar ay mbir yu yees yuñ defaree ak ay jumtukaay yuñ jëfandikoo ba noppi, waaye dañuy nettali itam li liggéeykati raay yi ci Afrique sowwu jant sos, ñoom ñi ñu daanulwoon bàyyi xel ci seen liggéey ci wàllu xarala ci taarix bi fi tubaab yi nekkee ak ginnaaw gi ñu fi jóge. Kon defaraat ay yëf nekk na mbir muy defaraat boo ko xoolee ci wàllu politik, di fësal kiliftéef ci wàllu xarala ak di móol yeneeni jaar-jaari infrastructure, liggéey ak xarañtéef.

• Aamodt, Solveig; Standal, Karina; Sarangi, Gopal K; Andrew, Robbie M; Batra, Bhavya & Nielsen, Kenneth B [Vis alle 9 forfattere av denne artikkelen] (2026). India’s role in energy transition. Oxford Open Energy. 5. doi: 10.1093/ooenergy/oiag009. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article takes stock of energy transition developments in India at different governance levels to offer examples and draw lessons-learned that can enhance our understanding of India’s potential role in the low-carbon energy transition, with particular focus on how to make transitions more inclusive of opportunities and address challenges in global South contexts. Being the world’s most populated country and the third-largest energy user and greenhouse gases emitter, India is key to the global transition from fossil to renewable energy. Energy efficiency, energy access, just transition, and renewable energy expansion are core objectives in India’s climate policies, but reaching climate, energy, and development goals simultaneously is challenging and often entails trade-offs. This article analyses the complexity of factors that influence opportunities and challenges to energy transition in India, and shows how India’s diversity and strong development-first emphasis is mirrored in energy developments around coal use and renewable energy expansion projects. The article further demonstrates a duality in India’s energy transition, from the local to the international level. On the one hand postponing the economic and societal costs of reducing coal, while on the other hand benefitting from the opportunities of new renewables, also connected to aspirations for a broader global role. As an experimental ground for renewable energy deployment and related international networks, India has shown the way in achieving co-benefits from early new renewable expansion, but several challenges remain to moving beyond low-hanging fruits and ensuring a transition that incorporates needed social redistribution of wealth and rights.

• Roca, Beltrán; Leivestad, Hege Høyer & Gallardo, Francisco J. Cuberos (2026). Work and trade unionism in the logistics chain: Socio-spatial approaches. Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales. ISSN 1131-8635. 44(1), s. 11–18. doi: 10.5209/crla.106980. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Este número monográfico pretende contribuir al debate acerca de la acción sindical en las cadenas logísticas prestando atención al modo en que los contextos laborales específicos —marcados por sistemas socio-técnicos, la posición en la cadena logística, sistemas de regulación del trabajo y la existencia de tradiciones sindicales— influyen en la conformación de formas particulares de agencia espacial en los trabajadores(Herod, 2001; Strauss, 2020; Roca, 2020). Los artículos emplean herramientas conceptuales de diferentes campos disciplinares, como la sociología del trabajo, la economía política, la antropología social y la geografía laboral, para estudiar los procesos de trabajo y los conflictos en tres nodos clave de la cadena logística: almacenes, puertos y reparto. Así, se pretende contribuir a una mejor comprensión del trabajo y el conflicto en las cadenas logísticas, aplicando una mirada centrada en las relaciones socioespaciales y sensible a las especificidades de los contextos geográficos. Los seis artículos avanzan a lo largo de la cadena de suministro, desde los puertos hasta los almacenes y, finalmente, hasta los repartidores.

• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Nilsen, Alf Gunvald (2026). The Violence of Hindu Nationalist Statecraft. Current history (1941). ISSN 0011-3530. 125(870), s. 127–132. doi: 10.1525/curh.2026.125.870.127. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The Hindu nationalist movement’s ideological vision has been systematically pursued through the use of state-sanctioned violence. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, this strategy has relied on both grassroots activism and vigilantism and a form of statecraft implemented through legislation at state and federal levels to marginalize Muslims and other minorities. In the process, India’s secular democracy has been transformed into an authoritarian ethnostate.

• Rippa, Alessandro (2026). When is a Frontier? Nostalgia and Aspirations at China’s Borderlands with Burma and Laos. Comparative Studies in Society and History. ISSN 0010-4175. s. 1–25. doi: 10.1017/s0010417526100462. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This article argues that nostalgia forms a crucial part of the imaginary that drives frontier economies—not in contradiction but alongside the future-oriented imaginaries of speculation, anticipation, and appearances. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted across three key locales—Pianma, Mong La, and the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone—this study introduces the concept of “frontier nostalgia” to analyze how these spaces function as sites of both economic opportunity and memory. While aspirations for prosperity drive individuals to engage with these dynamic zones, their lived experiences are marked by significant historical residue, creating a poignant longing for past vibrancy—and particularly for a form of hypersociality that characterize(d) frontier spaces. By examining the lived realities of Chinese migrants, the paper argues that nostalgia is not merely a counterpoint to forward-looking anticipation. Instead, it complements future-making practices and imaginaries by highlighting the complex emotional landscapes that characterize frontier encounters, hence constituting particular frontier subjectivities. In Pianma, remnants of a timber boom evoke a sense of melancholic yearning for lost sociality; in Mong La, vibrant social interactions coexist with developmentalist dynamics; and in the burgeoning Golden Triangle SEZ, rapid transformation echoes and actively resemble past experiences. Ultimately, this comparative analysis emphasizes how nostalgia shapes both individual identities and collective memories within these transient spaces, shedding further light on the experience of life on the frontier.

• Hartikainen, Elina I. (2026). What Do Modernist Imaginaries of Circulation Do, and Where Do They Come From? Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology. ISSN 1444-2213. s. 1–4. doi: 10.1080/14442213.2026.2636476. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Gokhale, Nihar (2026). Agroecology as Christian Environmentalism in a Hindu Majoritarian Context. I Hansen, Mette Halskov & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (Red.), Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. Leiden University Press. ISSN 9789087285081. s. 155–175. doi: https:/lup.nl/publications/academic-research/religion-and-ecological-crisis/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  How and why do religion and spirituality motivate individuals and collectivities in contemporary Asia to engage in environmental action? This question is at the heart of Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. Across nine chapters, the book examines a wide range of environmental initiatives, ranging from agroecology, waste recycling and dietary change, to a broader cultivation of ecological values and ethics. With case studies from India, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, the book brings out the complex ways in which religious and spiritual institutions and movements become repositories of alternative ways of knowing and acting on the world, complementing and sometimes also providing more radical alternatives to scientific forms of reasoning and materialist modes of living. Religion and Ecological Crisis also crucially demonstrates how the power of religious and spiritual forms of environmentalism to accelerate the transformation towards more sustainable ways of producing, consuming, and living is conditioned by wider structural relationships. While there may be no immediate ecological revolutions on the horizon in the contexts and communities analyzed in this book, the case studies powerfully portray a rich landscape of collective environmental agency that points towards an ongoing search for more ecologically sustainable and ethically sound futures.

• Roy, Meghna (2026). Trouble in Paradise: ‘Capacity to Aspire’ among Northeast Indian Migrants in Bengaluru's Wellness Industry. Anthropology in Action. ISSN 0967-201X. 32(1), s. 38–43. doi: 10.3167/aia.2025.320106. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Using themes and narratives from The White Lotus , this article ethnographically examines the positioning of migrants from Northeast India within the labour hierarchies of Bengaluru's wellness industry. It explores two trajectories: middle-class counsellors whose therapeutic expertise constitutes emotional labour, and working-class service providers – hairdressers and masseuses – whose labour combines touch and scripted care. Northeastern migrants are sought after for their perceived docility, English fluency and ‘Asian’ appearance, yet racialised biases limit their access to higher-status wellness professions requiring academic credentials. While pathways for self-making exist, the industry's promises of self-work and professional advancement remain unequally distributed. This analysis highlights how race, region and class shape the ‘capacity to aspire’ in urban contexts, positioning the wellness industry as a significant site for aspirational self-making.

• Hansen, Mette Halskov & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2026). Introduction. Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. I Hansen, Mette Halskov & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (Red.), Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. Leiden University Press. ISSN 9789087285081. s. 11–28. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In this introductory chapter, we situate the book and its case studies from Taiwan, China, India and Vietnam in the wider literature on spiritual ecology, global sustainability, transcendence, and grassroots environmental movements in the Asian context. We identify conjuncture, future-orientation, and dynamics between self and collective as three specific interlocking dimensions in the spiritually and religiously inspired movements and initiatives that the book is concerned with. A focus on these dimensions, we argue, can reveal specificities, commonalities and variations within a highly diverse field of spiritually and religiously inspired movements and initiatives that operate in very different cultural and political contexts.

• Rudi, Axel (2026). On the sidelines of conspiracy: Wasta and invisibility in Iraqi Kurdistan's pseudo-state. History and Anthropology. ISSN 0275-7206. s. 1–25. doi: 10.1080/02757206.2026.2615883. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The Middle East has often been described as a hot-bed for conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. In Iraqi Kurdistan, this is not immediately recognizable. Due to Iraqi Kurdistan's stateless history and accompanying conception of sociality, inhabitants do not conceive of invisibility in the same way as is presupposed in many conventional definitions of conspiracy theories. Citizens see invisibility as a provisional, rather than essential, facet of expanding social connections (wasta) that traverse civil/state divisions. As such, Iraqi Kurdish citizens by-and-large do not believe that a fundamentally separate and unseeable (group) of people can control the state and international politics. Examining how wasta is made in Iraqi Kurdistan highlights the liberal, state-centric presuppositions inherent in conventional definitions of conspiracy theories and assists in explaining the Euro-American fervour in combating them. Concordantly, the anthropology of conspiracism should not only aim at de-exoticising conspiracy theories but also reflect upon which presuppositions are brought to the discourse initially.

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• Kopf, Charline; Geissler, Paul Wenzel; Mbodj-Pouye, Aissatou & Meinert, Lotte (2026). Repair across Africa. Mending, Making and Material Care. Intellect Ltd.. ISBN 9781835952566. 324 s. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Examines repair as a dynamic social, material, cultural, and economic practice. Spanning diverse African contexts, it explores how mending connects labour, urban lives, and historical memories, revealing the artisanal skills and relational dynamics that underpin everyday acts of material care and transformation.

• Hansen, Mette Halskov & Nielsen, Kenneth Bo (2026). Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. Leiden University Press. ISBN 9789087285081. 233 s. doi: 10.24415/9789087285081. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  How and why do religion and spirituality motivate individuals and collectivities in contemporary Asia to engage in environmental action? This question is at the heart of Religion and Ecological Crisis: Responses from Asia. Across nine chapters, the book examines a wide range of environmental initiatives, ranging from agroecology, waste recycling and dietary change, to a broader cultivation of ecological values and ethics. With case studies from India, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, the book brings out the complex ways in which religious and spiritual institutions and movements become repositories of alternative ways of knowing and acting on the world, complementing and sometimes also providing more radical alternatives to scientific forms of reasoning and materialist modes of living. Religion and Ecological Crisis also crucially demonstrates how the power of religious and spiritual forms of environmentalism to accelerate the transformation towards more sustainable ways of producing, consuming, and living is conditioned by wider structural relationships. While there may be no immediate ecological revolutions on the horizon in the contexts and communities analyzed in this book, the case studies powerfully portray a rich landscape of collective environmental agency that points towards an ongoing search for more ecologically sustainable and ethically sound futures.

Se alle arbeider i NVA

• Prince, Ruth Jane & Geissler, Paul Wenzel (2026). Remembering the Covid pandemic with state health workers in Kenya. doi: https:/www.med.uio.no/helsam/english/research/news-and-events/events/others/2026/living-through-epidemics.html. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kopf, Charline; Geissler, Paul Wenzel; Mbodj-Pouye, Aissatou & Meinert, Lotte (2026). Living Repair: Mending and Material Care in Contemporary Africa. I Kopf, Charline; Geissler, Paul Wenzel; Mbodj-Pouye, Aissatou & Meinert, Lotte (Red.), Repair across Africa. Mending, Making and Material Care. Intellect Ltd.. ISSN 9781835952566. s. vi–xxii. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Examines repair as a dynamic social, material, cultural, and economic practice. Spanning diverse African contexts, it explores how mending connects labour, urban lives, and historical memories, revealing the artisanal skills and relational dynamics that underpin everyday acts of material care and transformation.

• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Barn, oppvekst og tilregneliggjøring i Norge og Stillehavet. [Radio]. NRK P2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Maertens, Carolin (2026). Beyond right-wing populism: Emerging more-than-human politics in the energy transition. doi: https:/www.resisterra.org/en/materials#material-42. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Renewable energy has emerged as a prominent technological response to climate change, generating increased political pressure to expand energy infrastructure. The paper asks how forests become political and politicised within conflicts over renewable energy infrastructure. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a rural community in eastern Germany and an analysis of legal and bureaucratic documents, I discuss how recent German legislation aimed at accelerating the renewable energy transition, via wind energy in particular, translates into contested changes in spatial planning that affect local politics and more-than-human livelihoods in profound ways. Situated within debates on green extractivism, I trace how these laws enact economic incentives as key drivers of implementation, prioritising wind energy expansion over other forms of local land use. With the analytical framework of sacrifice zones as a point of departure, I demonstrate how forests in particular are made expendable through a politics of denial that, by disregarding existing socio-ecological relations, frames forests as degraded and thus not even a “sacrifice.” Turning to a citizens movement against the appropriation of forests for wind energy, I then show how the politics of denial, I argue, prompts residents to actively re-make their relationships with forest as a socio-ecological formation, and in new, politicised ways. They do so by mobilising a more-than-human history of pollution and environmental destruction, political rupture, and socio-ecological transformation. Against rising disenfranchisement with institutionalised political actors and practices that is further fostered by right-wing populist opposition to the energy transition, this paper reflects on the possibilities and tensions of these emerging protest politics that evolve as locally grounded practice rooted in more-than-human relationships and shared history.

• Maertens, Carolin (2026). From Pit to Future: Transformative Aesthetics of Mine Restoration and German Reunifcation in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Eastern Germany. doi: https:/www.biordinary.se/eventinformation-och-anm-lan/the-ordinary-anthropocene-biodiversity-in-the-other-70. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In this paper, I trace the transformation of a large coal mine into a picturesque lakeland in Eastern Germany against the backdrop of profound socio-political and economic rupture. Starting from the insight that mine remediation is not simply a technical procedure but also a process of meaning-making, I examine this transformation as both constituted by and constitutive of contested aesthetics that reveal central aspects of the socio-political struggles surrounding reunification in Eastern Germany. While the transformation of a dust bowl into an idyllic lakeland might seem to offer obvious entry points for reflecting on landscape (through) aesthetics, I seek to unpack aestheticised notions of environmental disaster, post-industrial memorial, and post-socialist natural idyll in relation to their narration of socialist ruin, societal transformation, and East German experiences of reunification. The paper shows how the interpretation and mobilisation of particular landscape aesthetics do not necessarily draw on pre‑configured registers but instead emerge from socio-political struggles over East German subjectivity, historiography, and possible futures. Finally, by delineating how aesthetics become (part of) political practices, I argue for close attention to historically situated forms of practising aesthetics.

• Maertens, Carolin (2026). At the receiving end. The politics of energy transition in rural Eastern Germany. doi: https:/www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/oceh/events/oceh-events/lunch-seminars/2026/lunch-seminar-carolin-maertens-%E2%80%94-at-the-receiving-.html. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In 2023, German federal legislation granted “overriding public interest” to the expansion of renewable energy production facilities, which was further inscribed into spatial planning down to the local level. Based on preliminary fieldwork, this presentation traces the concrete effects produced by this built-in scalability through the case study of a new wind park currently in planning. A tentative analysis suggests that recent legislative shifts enable a profound reframing of land as merely an energy source, trumping other forms of value, and of citizens as risk factors to the realisation of renewable energy projects, who are therefore subjected to mitigation strategies rather than meaningful participation in decision-making.

• Maertens, Carolin (2026). At the receiving end. The politics of energy transition in rural Eastern Germany. doi: https:/www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/research/groups/nordic-laboratory/events/2026/26-v-landbruk-seminar-carolin-maertens.html. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The expansion of renewable energy sources (RES) has gained political prominence as one technological response to climate change. In many contexts, RES are being added to existing energy systems, often alongside continuing or growing energy demand, rather than in a straightforward substitution for fossil fuels. At the same time, political efforts to accelerate RES development are intensifying, in part so that governments can work toward their self imposed carbon reduction targets. As part of her research project “Contested Ground: Politics of Environmental Knowledge and Practice in Eastern Germany,” Carolin examines how changes in national energy policy are translated into local settings. In her talk at the LandBruk Seminar, she considers, from the vantage point of two rural communities in eastern Germany, what happens when federal energy transition policies seek to reorganise rural space and thereby reshape local livelihoods and political dynamics. Recent legislative changes in Germany provide strong support for RES expansion, which can take precedence over other land use interests. Drawing primarily on policy documents, reports, media coverage, and initial interviews, Carolin traces the development of one RES project as instances of political contestation with relevance beyond local energy policy.

• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Løpende nyhetskommentering. [TV]. Tv2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Maertens, Carolin (2026). Wut. Hüben wie drüben. [TV]. ARD/MDR (Tyskland). doi: https:/www.ardmediathek.de/video/wut/wut-hueben-wie-drueben/mdr/Y3JpZDovL21kci5kZS9iZWl0cmFnL2Ntcy9iYTE5OTc4Yy0zMTE3LTRkZWUtYjUyOS00NmJhZmI2NDNkOTg. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Wir waren im Osten, wir waren im Westen. Wir haben entdeckt, dass die Wut vieler Menschen "hüben wie drüben" ähnlicher ist, als man gemeinhin annimmt. Jetzt vereint Autor Matthias Schmidt beide Blickwinkel in einem Film und fährt im Wahljahr 2026 nach Baden-Württemberg und Sachsen-Anhalt. In Ost und West fängt der fünfte Teil der "Wut"-Reihe die Stimmung der Menschen im Land ein.

• Maertens, Carolin (2026). MDGs vindkraftforslag minner om tysk energipolitikk, skriver sosialantropolog. doi: https:/www.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/i/V6GgLJ/mdgs-vindkraftforslag-minner-om-tysk-energipolitikk-skriver-sosialantropolog. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Vindkraftdebatten i Norge er overraskende gjenkjennelig. En kikk på Tyskland kan skjerpe blikket for alt som kan gå galt – selv med de beste intensjoner.

• Maertens, Carolin (2026). Demokratiske partier taper stemmer til høyrepopulistene. Hvorfor? doi: https:/www.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/i/j0OBEw/demokratiske-partier-taper-stemmer-til-hoeyrepopulistene-hvorfor. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Ritualisering av tronskifte og spontane sorguttrykk. [Radio]. P2. doi: https:/radio.nrk.no/serie/ekko/IFAK02013926?utm_source=nrkradio&utm_medium=delelenke-web&utm_content=prf%3AIFAK02013926#t=1m4s. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Fellesskap i sorgen over Haralds bortgang. [TV]. NRK1. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Hva som gjorde Harald så nær for så mange. [Journal]. Demo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Rykteflom om Kongens død. [Journal]. Aftenposten. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Offentlige ritualer og spontane sørgeuttrykk. [Radio]. NRK P2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Hva kan vi lære av Jason Arday-saken? doi: https:/podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/392-hva-kan-vi-l%C3%A6re-av-jason-ardays-d%C3%B8d/id1617426775?i=1000784754573. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Jason Ardays tragiske skjebne. [Journal]. Vårt Land. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Semesterstart og hverdagsliv. [Radio]. NRK P2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Klemming og andre hilseformer. [Radio]. NRK P2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Bratrud, Tom (2026). Hjemme er det «hans» kontor og «hennes» kjøkken. [Internet]. Kifinfo.no. doi: https:/kifinfo.no/nb/2026/08/hjemme-er-det-hans-kontor-og-hennes-kjokken. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Mens mannen kaprer hjemmekontoret, blir kvinnen ofte sittende ved stue- og kjøkkenbordet. En norsk studie har undersøkt hvordan hjemmekontoret påvirker hverdagen til kvinnelige og mannlige forskere.

• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Varig endring etter fotball-vm? [Internet]. Tv2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Impact! The power of comparison in public anthropology. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Bäckström, Daniel Mohseni Kabir (2026). Gods and the State: Environmental Change in the Blang Mountains, China - New Books Network. doi: https:/newbooksnetwork.com/gods-and-the-state-environmental-change-in-the-blang-mountains-china. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  What happens to the environment when the state enters previously self-governed villages in rural China? We explore this question in the Blang mountains in southwestern China, a region that was incorporated into the nascent people’s republic of China from 1953 onwards, with immense consequences for Blang communities and ecologies. Our guest Daniel Mohseni Kabir Bäckström disentangles how the arrival of the state disrupted long-standing relations between Blang communities and the local mountain gods, making the land sick. And what Blang people can teach us about tackling the ongoing climate crisis.

• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Initieringsritualer fjernt og nært. [Radio]. NRK P1. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Hvorfor har færre henvendt seg til hjelpetelefoner under fotball-vm? [Radio]. NRK P2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Kama muta og spontane fellesskap. [Internet]. tv2.no. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Et mer inkluderende Norge under fotball-VM. [Internet]. NRK.NO. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Nielsen, Kenneth Bo & Wellens, Koen (2026). Spirituality, Science and Environmentalism in Taiwan - New Books Network. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Who is Shennong, the Divine Farmer? And how can he help us understand the intricate relationships between spirituality, science and environmentalism in Taiwan today? These questions are at the heart of new research by the University of Oslo’s Koen Wellens and Mette Halskov Hansen. In this episode, we are joined by Koen Wellens for a conversation on religious responses to environmental change, community temples, and reconnecting to nature via the Divine Farmer in the context of contemporary Taiwan.

• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Rudernde Norweger und schwedischer Neid. [Journal]. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Thorleifsson, Cathrine; Engebretsen, Elisabeth Lund; Berta, Ola Gunhildrud; Risan, Lars Christian; Mogstad, Heidi & Flikke, Rune (2026). «En apolitisk antropologi er umulig.». Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0802-7285. 37(2), s. 112–112. doi: 10.18261/nat.37.2.4. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  NAT-debatt ved Norsk antropologisk forenings årskonferanse 25. oktober 2025, Oslo

• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Da VM-roingen brøt alle demninger. [Radio]. P2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Communitas-fellesskap og VM-feiring. [Internet]. NRK.NO. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Communitas og festen etter VM-festen. [TV]. NRK1. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Fotball-VM og rituell unntakstilstand. [Internet]. Tv2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). VM-roing som tilskuerfenomen. [Radio]. P2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Haaland, Marte Emilie Sandvik; Dietrichs, Erik Sveberg & Danielsen, Lotte (2026). Forskning er ikke sløseri og en ulønnsom kostnad for samfunnet. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Aftenposten fokuserer på «sløseri», men problemet er at vi nedprioriterer forskning i en tid der vi trenger den som mest.

• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Norske kommuners vennskapsbyer. [TV]. NRK1. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). The soul. An empirical approach. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Fredsavtale med Iran, ishockeylandslaget, borgervern i sosiale medier. [TV]. Tv2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Roy, Meghna (2026). Det er en forskjell mellom en indisk kokk og en indisk ingeniør. doi: https:/www.aftenposten.no/meninger/debatt/i/K869pX/det-er-en-forskjell-mellom-en-indisk-kokk-og-en-indisk-ingenioer. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Norway's public debate on the deportation of Indian chefs has framed the issue primarily as a challenge to the labour market, arguing that the country risks losing skilled workers it cannot afford to lose. This op-ed argues that this framing misses the point. The chefs in question are not failing to be recognised as economic resources — they are already valued precisely because they are legible as authentically Indian. Unlike engineers, whose ethnicity is incidental to their professional value, the chefs' ethnicity is the product itself. The piece argues that advocating for migrants' right to remain on grounds of economic utility does not challenge the logic that makes them deportable — it reinforces it. What is absent from the debate is a simpler and more important argument: that lawful presence, work, and dignity ought to constitute a sufficient human claim to remain, independent of labour market calculus.

• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Pandeminostalgi. [Internet]. Tv2. doi: https:/www.tv2.no/nyheter/noe-rart-foregar-blant-unge-na-de-vil-ha-ny-lockdown/18834362/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Oljepris, Høyre og dieselavgifter, Carl Gustav 80 år og andre aktualiteter. [TV]. Tv2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Pruting på norsk. [Radio]. NRK P2. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Bratrud, Tom (2026). Fjellet - for hva og hvem? Kryssende linjer av idyll og strid. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Bratrud, Tom (2026). Det norske hytteparadokset. [Journal]. Firda Tidend. doi: https:/www.firdatidend.no/nyhende/det-norske-hytteparadokset-1/510759#%3A%7E%3Atext=%E2%80%93%20Det%20er%20mange%20paradoks%20n%C3%A5r%20det%20gjeld%2Cdei%20som%20alt%20har%20hytte%20der%20fr%C3%A5%20f%C3%B8r.. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Nordmenn er glade i hyttene sine, og dei er viktige for livskvaliteten. Rundt halvparten av oss har tilgang på ei hytte, og det er unikt i europeisk samanheng. Samstundes meiner åtte av ti at hyttebygging påverkar naturen og miljøet negativt.

• Bratrud, Tom (2026). Hemmat 2026: Stedet først - følger folka etter? doi: https:/www.livestockfestivalen.no/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Hva legger vi i 'hjem'? [Radio]. NRK1. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Kolshus, Thorgeir (2026). Epstein-dokumentene og norsk selvbilde. doi: https:/podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/kronprinsessen-og-epstein-det-er-et-intenst-ensomt/id1811118515?i=1000749085311. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv
• Rippa, Alessandro (2026). Border as infrastructure: violence and the technopolitics of connectivity and containment. XCEPT. doi: https:/www.xcept-research.org/publication/border-as-infrastructure-violence-and-the-technopolitics-of-connectivity-and-containment/. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In recent decades, the expansion of biometric surveillance has displaced and multiplied borders across the world. This is reflective of how border infrastructure – beyond its publicly acknowledged role of enhancing connectivity – operates as a tool of securitisation, legitimising certain forms of exchange and mobility while marginalising others. Drawing on the author’s long‑term ethnographic research along the China–Pakistan and China–Myanmar borders, coupled with analysis of the existing literature, the paper shows how infrastructural assemblages articulate state power, impact the politics of mobility, and animate political violence in borderlands. Whereas border infrastructures refers to the material apparatus through which states manage mobility and project authority in borderlands (e.g. roads, railways, fences, checkpoints, markets, pipelines, biometric databases), the border as infrastructure denotes the wider socio‑technical configuration these elements compose. Crucially, rather than treating infrastructures as passive instruments of state power, the latter lens spotlights the agency exerted by infrastructural arrangements. Border infrastructure enacts various forms of violence, from spectacular episodes of armed conflict to the more insidious ‘slow violence’ of everyday hardship, denial of movement and environmental harm. Despite such infrastructures being presented as neutral vehicles of ‘development’ and connectivity, it is often local communities who bear the brunt of displacement, militarisation and environmental degradation. At the same time, border infrastructures – precisely because they epitomise state power – are often turned into sites of resistance, sabotage and state evasion. In this way, border infrastructures mark both the limits and persistence of state power. The paper’s argument can be summarised as follows. First, border infrastructures are central to a contemporary regime in which connectivity and securitisation are mutually constitutive: roads, corridors and digital networks introduced to enhance flows also lead to new chokepoints, surveillance capabilities and exclusionary practices. Second, these infrastructural arrangements enact forms of violence that are often slow, dispersed and racialised, exposing certain populations to heightened risk and reduced mobility while shielding and enabling others. Third, infrastructural agency means that, once built, these systems shape conflict trajectories in ways not envisaged by planners or states. Recognising the border as infrastructure has real-life policy implications. Beyond legal reform or conventional diplomacy, efforts aimed at reducing border‑related violence must engage with the material layout and ‘technopolitics’ of border infrastructures themselves. A border as infrastructure perspective is vital when it comes to unpacking the material and technological architectures produced by connectivity and securitisation. Only then can we reconfigure these architectures in ways that diminish – not reproduce – the violence characteristic of increasingly infrastructured borders.

• Kopf, Charline & Lervik, Erlend Nordskogen (2026). Designing at Speed. Sustainability, Brand, and the Temporal Regime in a Foundation Owned Architecture Firm. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  --- Abstract will be published: 2028-05-13

• Rudi, Axel & Sønmez, Selma Strøm (2026). Drifting Further Apart: An Ethnography of Overlapping Borders Between Kaş and Kastellorizo. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis examines how multiple overlapping borders are lived, negotiated and reproduced in the everyday lives of people in Kaş, a small coastal town in southwestern Turkey. Kaş sits directly across from Kastellorizo, the Greek island closest to the Turkish mainland and furthest from mainland Greece. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2025, I trace how three borders have been drawn onto the same body of water at different historical moments. These are a national border in 1923, a European Union border in 2000 and a geopolitical border that became most visible in 2020. Each has produced its own forms of separation. Taking Sarah Green’s (2010, 2018, 2023) work on overlapping borders and accumulated tidemarks in the Aegean as my main theoretical framework, I organize these borders analytically through registers. By registers, I mean the different ways each border is experienced, practiced and reproduced in everyday life. The national register is continuously reproduced through everyday talk, legends and public festivals. The European Union register introduced new hierarchies of mobility and was strategically navigated by young people in Kaş who used Kastellorizo as a passage to Europe. The geopolitical register operates as an invisible mover, reshaping conditions without entering local conversation. I argue that the connections between the two places have not dissolved the distance but have become part of how that distance is produced. The thesis contributes to the anthropological study of borders by showing that overlapping borders are not experienced uniformly. They are lived, navigated and felt differently depending on the register through which they operate, and it is their accumulation over time that produces the growing distance between the two places.

• Ciribassi, Rebekah & Jensen, Siri Lund (2026). ADHD-paradokset. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Sammendrag Denne masteroppgaven undersøker hvordan ADHD diskuteres og gis mening til i norsk offentlighet, og hvordan debatten rundt diagnose, medisinering og funksjon kan forstås i lys av samtidens krav til arbeid, produktivitet, moral og ansvar. Oppgaven tar utgangspunkt i at ADHD ikke bare er en medisinsk diagnose, men også et samfunnsmessig fenomen som synliggjør forholdet mellom individet og de strukturene individet forventes å fungere innenfor. Gjennom en litteraturbasert og diskursanalytisk tilnærming analyserer oppgaven kronikker, medieoppslag, podcaster, offentlige debatter, bøker og digitale uttrykk som har vært sentrale i den norske ADHD-debatten de siste årene. I tillegg brukes antropologisk og sosiologisk teori, særlig Michel Foucaults perspektiver på makt, subjektivitet og individualisering, Hartmut Rosas teori om sosial akselerasjon, David Graebers refleksjoner rundt arbeid og verdi, Paul Farmers perspektiv på strukturell vold, Mikka Nielsens analyse av ADHD som en måte å erfare tid og verden på, og Janis Jenkins’ medisinsk-antropologiske perspektiver på levd erfaring. Et sentralt argument i oppgaven er at ADHD-debatten ikke bare handler om overdiagnostisering, underbehandling eller medisinering, men om et bredere produktivitetsproblem i samtiden. På den ene siden uttrykkes det bekymring for at normale variasjoner i menneskelig atferd sykeliggjøres. På den andre siden stiller det samme samfunnet stadig sterkere krav til selvregulering, effektivitet, arbeidsevne og stabil funksjon. Dette skaper det oppgaven omtaler som ADHD-paradokset: Mennesker med ADHD kan kritiseres dersom de ikke fungerer, men også kritiseres dersom de søker diagnose, medisiner eller tilrettelegging for å fungere bedre. Oppgaven viser hvordan dette paradokset forsterkes gjennom kjønn, sosiale medier, økonomisk ulikhet og tilgang til hjelp. Samlet argumenterer oppgaven for at ADHD-debatten ikke bare er en debatt om diagnose, men om hvordan moderne samfunn forstår menneskelig verdi, ansvar, arbeid, normalitet og hva det vil si å fungere i samtiden.

• Lien, Marianne Elisabeth & Veldhuis, Maaike Dieuwertje Oude (2026). Going Back to the Roots. Embodied Ways of Food Production in Kvitnes, Northern Norway. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis explores how food production, taste, and environmental relations are embodied and negotiated within the multispecies landscape of Kvitnes Gård, a farm-to-table restaurant in Hadsel Innland, Northern Norway. In a landscape that is characterized by economic abandonment, Kvitnes Gård represents an alternative initiative to industrial agricultural food systems. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted over four months, I examine how alternative forms of food production emerge in response to globalized food systems. Within this, I centralize the question of how farm-to-table restaurants in rural areas can inform us about human-landscape relations and experiences of food. By drawing on anthropological scholarship on soil, food, and landscape, I analyze how Kvitnes Gård forms a multispecies assemblage in which humans and nonhumans are entangled and create experiences of food and taste. Sensorial and immersive ethnographic methods foreground how the landscape of Hadsel Innland can be experienced. Descriptions of hiking, fishing and interacting with the soil create tactile grounds that allow me to analyze everyday practices and understand how food and taste are produced in tandem with the landscape. I explain how Hadsel Innland challenges dominant understandings about remoteness by discussing the lived experiences from people that inhabit this area. Infrastructures form and shape Hadsel Innland and are actively engaged with in the process of place-making by local residents. Furthermore, I pay attention to human-soil relations and show how the food production at Kvitnes Gård is inseparable from embodied acts of care. Soil is an active agent in shaping local foodscapes and determines how guests can experience taste and food. Taste is not just a biological process, but socially and culturally constructed. I argue that Kvitnes Gård hinges upon discourses and imaginaries surrounding the Arctic landscape, shaping people’s ideas about the locality and quality of the food. By analyzing taste as a transformative act, I highlight how affective states influence both culinary practices and experiences of food. Additionally, the kitchen culture and labor environment contain hierarchies that create tensions between ideals about equality, social sustainability and the economic realm of running a farm-to-table restaurant in a rural place. Cosmopolitan culinary cultures reveal the complexities that underpin the food industry, and show that labor environments are more layered than it seems. Ultimately, I propose that farm-to-table restaurants illustrate how food is deeply entangled within multispecies relations and affective experiences of landscapes, giving us more insight into why we eat what we eat.

• Hartikainen, Elina Inkeri & Skadsdammen, Maia Emilie (2026). The Making of Religious Belonging. Church, Community, and Everyday Life in Post-Pandemic America. Universitetet i Oslo. Vis sammendrag

  This master’s thesis contributes to the scholarship on the Anthropology of Christianity and the emphasis on fellowship and belonging within Christianity, with a specific focus on the aftermath of a global pandemic. This thesis investigates how the church helps provide a foundation for religious belonging and how this cultivates a greater sense of fellowship among young adult Christians in the United States today. It was inspired by questions about what happened to the church community when it moved from a physical, embodied space to a virtual one, and how the church was able to sustain the church community in times of social distancing and political unrest. And how fellowship and community continued to be reinforced throughout the pandemic and in the years that followed. This thesis is based on approximately six months of fieldwork, and shows how the church, through different initiatives, creates a sense of belonging for both new and old members of the church; yet the findings extend beyond institutional church practices. The findings indicate that, while church initiatives can be seen as a way into the community and are important for religious life, personal relationships and growth also play a significant role in people’s sense of belonging and fellowship at church and among other congregants. This thesis approaches fellowship as a primary object of study, a category which is rarely treated in isolation within the anthropology of Christianity. By drawing on the anthropology of Christianity, scholarship on mediated religion and imagined communities, faith-based fellowship and belonging, and Robert Orsi’s (1997) theory of lived religion, this thesis has approached religious belonging not as a fixed condition but as a relational process that is continuously produced through shared practices, repeated presence, and meaningful human interactions, both within and beyond the formal spaces of church life. Keywords: Anthropology of Christianity, evangelical Christianity, belonging, lived religion, young adults, COVID-19, United States

• Rippa, Alessandro & Lam, Eileen Hien Thanh (2026). Language Learning and Aspirations in Urban Vietnam. Language Cafés and Middle-Class Futures. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis examines how language learning among the new middle classes in Ho Chi Minh City is tied to aspirations for mobility, self-development, and imagined futures. Focusing on language cafés as informal learning spaces, it explores how these practices shape aspirations, identities, and social relations. Drawing on five months of ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation at language cafés and informal interviews with local and foreign participants, the thesis explores these practices from multiple perspectives. The findings indicate that language learning practices function as future-oriented strategies through which members of the new middle classes in urban Vietnam navigate their lives in an increasingly globalized world. Drawing on Earl’s (2020) notion of future-making tactics, the thesis understands language learning as a way of working toward desired futures. In this context language cafés emerge as informal and accessible sites for learning and social interaction, where aspirations for mobility, self-improvement, and social connection are practiced and negotiated. The thesis draws on Pratt’s (1991) concept of contact zones to highlight how interactions in these spaces reveal asymmetrical power relations between local and foreign participants. Foreign participants are often associated with roles and expectations related to linguistic ability and forms of globalness and contribute to shaping future imaginaries and cosmopolitan orientations amongst local participants. Through Appadurai’s (1996) framework of global cultural flows, the thesis situates these practices within the broader structural forces that have made language learning both necessary and desirable for urban Vietnam’s emerging middle-classes. Altogether, this thesis contributes to the broader discussions of middle-class aspiration and consumption practices in urban Asia, offering an analysis of language cafés as sites where members of the middle class navigate future-making, intercultural encounters and imagined futures in everyday life.

• Thorleifsson, Cathrine & Oh, Haeyeon (2026). The Dilemma of Upcycling. Between Environmental Promise and Structural Constraint in South Korea. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Upcycling is widely promoted as a sustainable response to the environmental crisis, as it transforms waste into value-added goods. Yet in everyday commercial settings, particularly in South Korea, upcycled products often appear as fashion-oriented, trend-driven commodities. This dilemma motivates the thesis. The research examines how upcycling becomes legible as ‘sustainable’ in market settings, and under what conditions it functions as a form of waste reduction versus a moralized mode of consumption. Conceptually, the thesis draws on structuralist approaches to classification, Lévi-Strauss’s bricolage, Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s concept of overheating, and Anthropocene debates on temporality, responsibility, and scale. Rather than applying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as an evaluative benchmark, I treat it as an evidentiary language through which environmental credibility is unevenly produced and recognized. Empirically, this thesis draws on five months of ethnographic fieldwork in South Korea, including participant observation at temporary retail and promotional events and semi-structured interviews with small upcycling brands and organizational actors. A supplementary interview in Norway and existing scholarship on Ghana serve as analytical contrasts. Using the concepts of the green grid and material imaginaries, the analysis shows how sustainability becomes unevenly visible to consumers and why particular waste streams, especially plastics, become privileged as upcycling materials. It also reframes greenwashing not simply as intentional deception, but as a structural condition produced by unstable definitions of sustainability and uneven access to evidence. The thesis argues that the sustainability of upcycling depends not solely on materials but emerges from infrastructure, market logics, classification practices, and justificatory regimes. These elements can steer upcycling either toward waste reduction or toward the commodification of ethical claims.

• Tisdel, Michelle; Mekonen, Solomon & Viken, Jennifer Durruthy (2026). “Finally, let’s really talk about it”. How racialization shapes the way Black women and Black non-binary people experience their bodies. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  How does racialization shape the way Black women and Black non-binary people experience their bodies in Oslo, Norway? This thesis is based on fieldwork conducted in Oslo, Norway over six months in 2025. The main methods were participant observation, ethnographic walks, semi structured interviews and autoethnography. The experiences that participants shared suggest that a collective experience of Black people, shaped by the legacies of race and racialization is emerging. What it means to be “Black” is self-fashioned through experience, and the intentional creation of community with others who are racialized in similar ways. Through themes of constraint, tension, and release, I investigate the different ways one can view the body as a site of experience. The thesis seeks to contribute to the growing field of Nordic Black feminism. The Norwegian context of “imagined sameness” and colonial innocence influence the lack of nuanced public conversation about race (Gullestad 2002). Thus, it is important to pursue scholarship in these underrepresent contexts. I engage with the work of scholars such as ethnographer Oda-Kange Midtvåge Diallo and cultural anthropologist Lena Sawyer whose work engages with the experiences of Black women in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The thesis attempts to capture the Black feminist impulses for liberation that people enact in everyday practice. In the first section, I discuss how Black women and non-binary people experience negative stereotypes about their Blackness and femininity. The participants used different strategies to distance themselves from these perceptions. In the second section, I argued that gendered racialization shapes the emotional landscapes and affective experience of the body. This occurs by causing a sense of hyperawareness of being different. In the third section, I argue that the body is connected to resistance through psychological, emotional and moral worlds. Furthermore, I discuss the body as the existential vehicle through which participants experience moments of joy and freedom. Through a racial consciousness, gender identity and search for community, the participants can protect themselves from the psychological effects of gendered racialization.

• Hoëm, Ingjerd & Hagemoen, Simen Bergh (2026). Economic uncertainty and forms of wealth in the Cook Islands and its diaspora. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Abstract This thesis explores economic uncertainty and forms of wealth in the Cook Islands and its diaspora. The Cook Islands is a small Pacific nation located in the South Pacific. The country has been in free association with New Zealand since 1965, and today many Cook Island Māori live abroad in New Zealand. The economy in the Cook Islands is strongly influenced by the tourism sector, which creates both opportunities and uncertainties. While economic uncertainty is often discussed as a matter of limited economic resources, this thesis argues that wealth can be understood in numerous ways, and that money alone does not determine whether a person can maintain a secure livelihood. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Cook Islands and New Zealand, based on participant observation and informal conversations, I examine how uncertainty can be experienced through housing regulations, land rights, access to healthcare, mobility, tourism, and social relations. The analytical framework draws on Jane Guyer’s distinction between “Wealth in things” and “Wealth in people,” and Pierre Bourdieu's perspective on three forms of capital. I also engage with the debate between Lewis' concept of “Culture of poverty” and Moss' critique of his view. The analysis of the findings shows that economic uncertainty in the Cook Islands and its diaspora is not only experienced by those who have limited economic capital. It also affects people who hold other forms of wealth such as social and cultural capital. While money may be commonly seen as the most crucial form of capital, this thesis shows how land and social relations can become just as vital.

• Engebretsen, Elisabeth Lund & Seidensticker, Paula (2026). "We Exist Everywhere and We Always Have!" Critical Imaginations and Constructions of Queerness in Rural Northern Germany. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Queerness and rural areas are often imagined as mutually exclusive. Despite Kath Weston’s (1995) critique of these imaginaries more than thirty years ago, queerness is still commonly associated with urban spaces, and Europe remains comparatively under-researched within rural queer studies. This thesis contributes to rural queer studies through an ethnographic study of rural queer lives in northern Germany. It asks how queer residents of rural northern Germany live, imagine, and negotiate their everyday worlds, and how these practices and narratives reconfigure understandings of rurality and rural queerness. More specifically, it explores how rural queer belonging and metronormative imaginaries shape the daily lives and self-understandings of rural queer people. Rural queer people’s multifaceted experiences of belonging show that belonging is not simply given; it is actively created through relationships, community involvement, and participation in local traditions. In these processes, queerness is often de-emphasized, resulting in less visible or clearly defined expressions of queerness. This challenges dominant models of queer identity that hinge on a binary between queer/urban and non-queer/rural and that cast rural queer life as primarily painful and exclusionary. In the German context, narratives of the rural as queer-exclusionary intersect with narratives of non-Western places as queer-exclusionary, positioning East Germany as the primary locus of violent anti-queer sentiment. This interplay of narratives, which constructs both “the rural” and “the non-Western” as homophobic, rests on imaginaries of the urban West as the center of modernity and superiority. Such constructions reinforce colonial power structures by positioning the West as inherently more progressive. By examining these dynamics in East Germany, this thesis shows how critical research on rurality within the West can unsettle naturalized assumptions of Western progressiveness and challenge ongoing colonial power structures. Finally, rural queer people challenge dominant models of queer identity, by asserting queerness as historical, rather than an aspect of modernity. These challenges can contribute to more nuanced understandings of temporal discourses in contemporary constructions of queerness.

• Kiik, Laur & Jensen, Ingeborg Tveide (2026). Å dele eller tie: Natur, autentisitet og digitale delingspraksiser i norsk turkultur. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Bør alle turer deles på sosiale medier? I dagens norske turkultur, har sosiale medier blitt en viktig arena for å formidle og dele naturopplevelser. Denne oppgaven vil ta for seg hvordan digital deling, eller strategisk ikke-deling, av naturopplevelser på sosiale medier former opplevelser av autentisitet, forholdet til naturen og ideer om naturvern i en norsk kontekst. Studien baserer seg på samtaler, intervjuer, spørreundersøkelser, og analyse av naturinnhold på sosiale medier, og setter empirien i dialog med forskning og litteratur om autentisitet, digital kultur, identitet, natur og turisme. Oppgaven hevder at digitale delingspraksiser ikke bare former hvordan autentisitet i naturen oppleves og uttrykkes, men også hvordan enkeltpersoner forhandler om synlighet, selvpresentasjon og ansvar overfor natur i delingsbeslutninger på sosiale medier. Studien viser at digital deling ikke nødvendigvis gjør naturopplevelser mindre autentiske, men at sosiale medier påvirker hvordan autentisitet uttrykkes, dokumenteres, fremstilles og deles. Naturinnhold på sosiale medier blir ofte estetisert eller idealisert, samtidig som deling påvirkes av normer for beskjedenhet, sosial sammenligning og selvpresentasjon. Oppgaven viser videre hvordan sosiale medier påvirker hvilke naturområder som oppsøkes, hvordan mennesker oppfører seg i naturen, og hvordan praksiser rundt deling og bevisst ikke-deling fungerer som former for moderne naturforvaltning. Gjennom strategisk taushet, moderering og ansvarlig deling forsøker både innholdsskapere, forvaltere og vanlige brukere å begrense slitasje, overturisme og eksponering av sårbare naturområder. Oppgaven argumenterer for at digitale delingspraksiser former både autentisitet, forhold til naturen, og naturvern, ved å gjøre natur synlig, sosial sammenlignbar og algoritmisk styrt. Deling og ikke-deling av naturinnhold fungerer dermed ikke bare som individuelle handlinger, men som normstyrte praksiser som påvirker hvordan natur oppleves, brukes og beskyttes i en digital tidsalder. Oppgaven konkluderer med at digital deling av naturopplevelser ikke bare handler om dokumentering, men også om hvordan natur forstås, oppleves og vurderes gjennom sosiale og digitale praksiser. Autentisitet fremstår dermed ikke som noe fast, men som noe som kan skapes i samspillet mellom synlighet, fravær og sosiale normer. Dette innebærer at både deling og ikke-deling av naturinnhold må forstås som aktive praksiser som påvirker både naturopplevelser og naturvern i en digital tidsalder.

• Eriksen, Thomas Hylland; Martin, Keir & Panettiere, Giulio Maria (2026). Healing the future, changing the past Of climate change politics and poetics, disease, and mangroves in Fiji. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  --- Abstract will be published: 2027-05-20

• Rudi, Axel & Njålsson, Frida Vidarr (2026). The Everyday of Stuckness: An Ethnographic Study of the Experienced Stuckness in the Lives of the Inhabitants of Tbilisi. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis explores experiences of immobility and ``stuckness'' in contemporary Georgia. Stuckness appears on several levels. In this thesis, I focus on four main dimensions: structural, temporal, affective and relational. Drawing on six months of fieldwork in Tbilisi, I ask what forms stuckness takes, where it comes from, and how people experience and respond to it. I argue that stuckness is produced in different ways. First, Georgia's geographical location and history place the country in a tense geopolitical position between Russia and Europe (the EU). Second, the ruling party, Georgian Dream, contributes to reproducing stuckness through its political practices, including fear‑based campaigning, patronage and close relations with the Church. Third, stuckness emerges relationally, as people compare their own possibilities for movement with those of more mobile foreigners. Empirically, the feeling of stuckness becomes visible as the path towards EU membership becomes increasingly blurry, in fragmented opposition politics and fatigue from protesting, in contested cultural debates around family values, religion and LGBTQ rights, and through global mobility hierarchies. The government's harsh treatment of protesters and opposition politicians further reinforces discouragement and limits collective agency. Through participant observation, the study highlights ambivalent forms of agency, daily protest practices, legal activism, entrepreneurial strategies and narratives of hope and pride that both resist and reproduce stuckness. The thesis offers a way to rethink what it means to seek stability, dignity and ``a European future'' when the future is both urgently desired and stubbornly withheld.

• Suarez, Maka & Karbasov, Nikita (2026). Between Scylla and Charybdis: Troubling the Northern Waters. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  --- Abstract will be published: 2031-05-13

• Flikke, Rune & Nilsson, Emma Winther (2026). The White Yoga Matrix. An Investigation of White Femininity in Cape Town. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis explores how white femininity is produced, lived, and negotiated within Cape Town’s yoga scene. To do so, the analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork in and around yoga studios and retreats frequented by white—and, as this thesis explores, “honorary white”—women. Extending on this, it examines the role yoga plays within the lives of these women and how their practice is entangled with the post apartheid, postcolonial city they inhabit. I argue that a specific material white femininity is forged at the intersection of three interdependent relations: the city of Cape Town, the yoga studios within it, and the predominantly white women who attend them—a configuration I refer to as the White Yoga Matrix. Within this matrix, whiteness is sustained through a distinct white individualism that structures women’s relations to yoga, themselves, and others. Equally, I show how neoliberal restructuring, and persistent racialized fears make space in the city feel increasingly precarious, and how yoga becomes a way for certain white and honorary white women to cultivate disciplined, slender, and idealized bodies that function as a boundary making practice, carving out layered safe spaces in a violent city. In doing so, the thesis offers an ethnographic account of how racialization, whiteness, and boundary making are enacted through everyday embodied practices of yoga within a commercialized spiritual landscape, and how such practices help manage fear and privilege while sustaining racialized boundaries in contemporary Cape Town.

• Suarez, Maka & Ruud, Olav (2026). Agile capitalism. Change, space and aspirations in Telenor Norge. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This text deals with corporate reorganizations, local perspectives and aspirations within Telenor Norge, Norway’s largest Telecommunication company. As the fieldwork coincided with a large new corporate restructuring in Telenor, I examine how employees in different departments navigate a continually changing workplace. This, broadly, is done in three parts. First is that of employees navigating different and emerging social orders, in which different teams mitigate their own work, divergent temporalities and gendered structures in their daily office lives. Second is space, in which I track different spatial practices in the Telenor offices, highlighting how the use of office space can be understood as a tethering of place and culture in a corporate environment of change. Lastly, the third chapter is an exploration in the aspect of aspirations within the Telenor context, focusing on aspirations towards agile work forms and of the financialization of the company. In combination, the analysis of orders, space and aspirations aim to articulate the manifolded practices of employees of Telenor Norge, in meeting the new corporate organization that was still being put in place when I arrived in the field.

• Lien, Marianne Elisabeth & Belendez, Sara Martinez (2026). The Multispecies Sheepscape. An Ethnography of Life and Dwelling on South Greenlandic Sheep Farms. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  --- Abstract and files will be published: 2027-05-13

• Thorleifsson, Cathrine & Aarnes, Kristine (2026). The Amazon is a Graveyard of Projects. Human-Plant Relations in a Forest Conservation Project in the Peruvian Amazon. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The Amazon rainforest looms large in the global imagination as both a symbol of pristine nature and a site in urgent need of protection. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon, this master’s thesis examines how a forest regeneration centre in a region described as a “graveyard of projects” operated. This thesis asks how conservation is enacted in practice, focusing on the daily interactions between humans, plants and the forest, and how these relations shape the policies of the organization. Drawing on anthropological approaches to the more-than-human, as well as literature on knowledge and care practices, I show how conservation projects are reliant on being flexible in negotiating the different needs of both people and the forest. I use the term “forest knowledge” as a way of analysing how relationships with the forest are transformed as it moves throughout the different levels in the organization, and how these practices are translated into quantifiable data in order to meet the demands of grants and funders. By examining what is gained and what risks being lost in this translation process, the thesis highlights how human-plant relations shapes conservation practices in a forest restoration project in the Peruvian Amazon.

• Oslo, Dr. Rebekah Marie Ciribassi. Department of Social Anthropology. University of; Mwanza, Fr. Dr. Innocent Sanga. Head of Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. St. Augustine University of & Haakonsen, Camilla (2026). Unity in Diversity. An Ethnography of Interfaith Relationships in Arusha, Tanzania. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Abstract This thesis investigates how kinship accommodates interfaith families in Arusha. It argues through ethnographic examples that kinship has to be flexible in order to accommodate interfaith relationships. It explores how accommodations regarding interfaithness are done in negotiations between formal religious institutions and informal interfaith families. The thesis explores how flexible accommodation of interfaith relationships happens in secular spaces. This thesis argues that secular spaces are productive spaces where negotiation takes place through syncretic encounters. Secular spaces are borderlines where kinship can become flexible in order to accommodate Muslim-Christian interfaith relationships generally and Muslim-Christian interfaith families specifically. In other words: how people relate to religion is based on context. That kinship ties and the goal to sustain family relationships exceed religious differences, create flexibility on family levels. In relation to the practices of religious institutions, and how these affect individual lives, religious certainty among individuals enables them to create their own lived flexible religiosity. The thesis sheds light on that Tanzanian history plays a role in what Muslim-Christian interfaith relationships look like in Arusha specifically and Tanzania generally today. It highlights my interlocutors’ remark that a crucial part in getting interfaith relationships to function is love for a person, place or group. Followingly, this thesis shows how there often is “unity in diversity” in the society in general and within interfaith families specifically. The thesis investigates how “unity in diversity” is created in the borderland between the institutional public sphere, and the private family sphere. This approach proves accurate in the context of Arusha if we follow the phrasing of an interlocutor stating that “[the family members] just had to accept my choice to convert because they love me”. Such ethnographic data suggests that affectionate “love” often softens tensity where there is a lack of understanding. This thesis touches upon how historical religious and/or interfaith processes in Tanzania and beyond, have affected how individuals and their families relate to interfaithness and their congregations in the religious institutions they adhere to. The thesis concludes that interfaith unity is desirable and possible in and among interfaith relationships because interfaith negotiations have been done in generations around the often shared understanding that “God is one” in a societal context where “few see a life without the belief in a God”. Keywords: Interfaithness, Interfaith Families, Muslim-Christian Interfaith Relationships, Lived Religion, Syncretism, Secular Spaces, Unity, Diversity, Love, Arusha, Tanzania.

• Martin., Keir & Bueie., Marte (2026). Profession, Class, and Self-making. Becoming a counselling psychologist in Taiwan. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis aims to investigate the following research question: How do everyday practices within psychology counselling education programs in Taiwan reveal the production and negotiation of classed forms of professional self-making within an emerging and changing mental health profession? The thesis is based on six months of fieldwork in Taiwan, with interviews as the primary method of data collection. The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on psychological anthropology and critically engages with concepts of individualism, the neoliberal subject and social class reproduction theory. I examine three levels in the field: the perspectives of students, professionals and clients – including perspectives on the future of psychotherapy in Taiwan. Through this, the thesis contributes to the research field by offering insight into how psychotherapy is shaped in a non-Western context, characterised by both global influence and local structures. With an increased emphasis on individualism and individual responsibility. Across the three levels, my analysis shows that the emergence of psychotherapy is in line with local developments of economic growth and class consciousness. The means of self-making for counsellors, students, and clients are all shaped by the various structures of the field they navigate. The financial aspects of all three levels are rooted in the same neoliberal, market-driven systems. Education is shaped by a combination of economic, social, and personal motivations and is framed as an investment. Professional identities are actively constructed and, in light of neoliberal perspectives, can be understood as an individual responsibility for risks, changing labour markets, and self-making. Access to psychotherapy is shown to be socially differentiated, influenced by economic, but also cultural, understandings of mental health and stigma. Taken together, the study demonstrates how psychotherapy in Taiwan functions as an arena where professional selves are both shaped and negotiated through classed conditions, neoliberal ideals of self-investment and global influences.

• Hartikainen, Elina Inkeri & Granerud, Hélen (2026). Always the Other. Foreigners in South Korea and their experience of multiculturalism within the Korean state and society. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Summary This thesis explores multiculturalism in South Korea by examining how foreign women living in South Korea experience the state, the general public, and interpersonal relationships. The thesis focuses on wealthier foreigners with better visa conditions, adding to the anthropological discussion around multiculturalism in Korea by showing that the issues around multiculturalism are not specifically affecting poor foreigners, although they are impacted more, but impacting anyone who is not considered Korean. The expectations of foreigners to assimilate, trying to become as Korean as possible to ‘fit in’, shows how attitudes around homogeneity in the country cause issues when multiculturalism is implemented, especially as the construction of the Korean race is done through blood relations, making it impossible for any non-Korean to become Korean. The multicultural state focused on assimilation is thus making a false promise by emphasizing assimilation as important, yet knowing that foreigners cannot become equal through assimilation, making them always the Other. This is presented through my interlocutors’ experiences with inclusion and acceptance in South Korea, within different relationships. I present their relationship with the state, which is accepting of some foreigners but not others, creating a hierarchy amongst foreigners in Korea through visa processes. In addition, the state appears distant and vague to foreigners, with laws to protect foreigners not being implemented or being broken, and the general confusion foreigners feel when dealing with the state. Further, I show how the general public experience foreigners, being conflicted on whether foreigners are a positive or negative to South Korea, allocating certain areas of society to them as a result of attitudes often rooted in stereotypes rather than actual experiences Koreans have had with foreigners. This not only causes foreigners to experience discrimination, no matter how close they get to the ideal “model minority”, but it also creates difficulties when foreigners try to create a community around themselves, causing a divide between Koreans and foreigners even on an interpersonal level. Throughout their experiences, my interlocutors show how the multicultural South Korea is more of a facade for South Korea to be seen as progressive, while actual change and support of foreigners is lacking for all foreigners.

• Thorleifsson, Cathrine & Bjørnebekk, Sara (2026). Hidden Truths. Conspiracy Theories, Beliefs, and Meaning-Making in Digital Conspiracy Communities. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In mainstream media and public discourse, conspiracy theories are often portrayed as misinformation, irrational narratives, and associated with ignorance. However, such depictions oversimplify the complexity of conspiracy theories. Rather than understanding conspiracy theories as simply false, they can also be understood as systems of belief and culture. In recent years, conspiracy communities online have grown in popularity, offering a digital space for such shared beliefs. This thesis explores conspiracy theories, beliefs and meaning-making in digital conspiracy communities. Based on digital fieldwork conducted on social media platforms like Reddit, Discord, 4chan, and Instagram, this thesis examines why people believe in conspiracy theories, and how such narratives contribute to meaning-making, belonging, and shared identity. This thesis thus argues that conspiracy theories don’t only offer alternative explanations to reality, but also construct belief systems and social frameworks in which individuals create meaning, a sense of belonging, and identity in digital environments. This thesis does not approach conspiracy theories as misinformation, but rather as a form of meaningful systems of constructed narratives, creating communities of shared beliefs. The first ethnographic chapter explores how algorithms on social media platforms contribute to shaping knowledge production through repeated exposure of certain content; the second chapter analyses digital conspiracy communities, their culture, and how they foster a sense of belonging and shared identity, even in hostile environments; the third ethnographic chapter examines the appeal of conspiracy narratives through analysing used rhetoric and collective effervescence in such beliefs; while the last chapter explores the relationship between religion and conspiracy theories, specifically examining how religion is lived, interpreted, and used in conspiracy thinking.

• Ciribassi, Rebekah Marie & Minge, Mia Helene Soemarno (2026). The Harm We Want to Reduce - An Ethography of Harm Reduction in Practice: a Drug-Checking Laboratory in Oslo. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  The Harm We Want to Reduce - An Ethnography of Harm Reduction in Practice: A Drug-Checking Laboratory in Oslo, a master’s thesis by Mia Helene Soemarno Minge, examines how harm reduction is practiced, negotiated and constrained in Norway’s first drug checking lab, run by the NGO Safer Drug Policies. Based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation, informal conversations, and volunteer work that later developed into employment, the thesis investigates the different aspects of harm in harm reduction and how it is produced and managed. It explores how social, economic, political structures affect society’s view on harm reduction and users. The thesis consists of three chapters; chapter 1 explores how knowledge is produced and negotiated in the drug checking lab. It investigates who can become an expert, and that knowledge is situational and is created by community. Chapter 2 examines what the harms are in harm reduction. It sees beyond the physiological effects the substances have, and sees how health- and welfare systems, police and political policies affect harm. Chapter 3 explores how economic privileges creates invisibility, and as a result enables drug use and removes access from harm reduction services. Towards the conclusion, it argues that harm reduction in Oslo is not only a technical project of making drug use safer, but a relational and political practice that both responds to and is limited by broader moral and political-economic regimes surrounding drugs.

• Naguib, Nefissa & Årset, Maria (2026). Caritas: Care, Bureaucratic Ambivalence and the Norwegian Welfare State. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis examines volunteer advisory work at Caritas Norway’s resource center in Oslo as a site through which the Norwegian welfare state is encountered, negotiated and made tangible in everyday life. Based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted through participant observation as a volunteer advisor, the thesis explores what such practices reveal about the limits and possibilities of an increasingly digitalized and neoliberal welfare state. Drawing on theories of bureaucracy, sovereignty, caregiving and digital bordering, the analysis investigates how access to welfare services increasingly depends on an individual’s ability to navigate complex bureaucratic and digital systems. In this context, the Caritas resource center emerges as an important intermediary space where volunteers assist visitors in interpreting documents, accessing rights, and making the state temporarily reachable. The thesis argues that these encounters reveal the growing distance between citizens and formal welfare institutions, particularly for individuals who are digitally excluded or otherwise marginalized from public services. At the same time, the thesis highlights the ambivalent role of civil society within the welfare state. While the resource center provides essential forms of caregiving, recognition, and situated knowledge production, its existence also points toward structural gaps that voluntary organizations are increasingly expected to fill. In this sense, organizations such as Caritas risk functioning as a hvilepute (“resting pillow”) for the state, softening the consequences of exclusion while potentially reducing pressure for broader structural reform. Ultimately, the thesis argues that the Norwegian welfare state cannot be understood solely through its formal institutions or universal ideals, but must also be continuously examined through the everyday encounters in which bureaucracy, care, inequality and state power are negotiated in practice.

• Flikke, Rune & Velde, Julia van der (2026). In the Same Heat? An Ethnography of Thermal Sociality at the Oslo Badstuforening. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis investigates social interaction and the badstue culture at the Oslo Badstuforening, a non-profit civic association striving for 'badstue til folket': 'sauna for the people'. Based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork and sensory anthropology, this study analyses how bodily, atmospheric, and political forms of warmth converge in a unique form of connectedness. I develop the concept of ‘thermal sociality’ to describe this somatic mode of connectedness: a connection arising from shared sensory exposure to heat and cold, in which bodily vulnerability and a cultivated atmosphere generate a deep form of intimacy. At the same time, the thesis examines the political promise of the association. By zooming in on issues of gender, sexuality, and class, I investigate the gap between inclusive ambitions and the structural conditions that determine access and safety in practice. The findings suggest that thermal social interaction does not arise spontaneously from heat alone, but is sustained by institutional labour, embodied norms, and ongoing negotiations regarding for whom the space is actually intended within a gentrifying urban context.

• Lien, Marianne Elisabeth; (tidligere), Yayi Zheng & Kjeller, Malthe Helgren (2026). Pockets of Hope. An ethnography of peasant practices and relations in southcentral Alaska. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Land in southcentral Alaska is changing. Not only are the effects of anthropogenic climate changes remaking land and sea, but many of the vistas also closely associated with depictions of Alaska – rushing rivers, deep valleys, stark mountains, and seemingly endless forests – are being increasingly wrapped up in a newer kind of Alaskan landscape: farmland. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork with small-scale, rural farmers in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley (Mat-Su), this thesis follows the practices, relations, and materials that make and unmake farmland, and the hopeful assemblages of land and life that emerge from these projects. Employing a material semiotic analytic of assemblages, I lean on anthropological literature about land use, new peasantries, northern frontiers, domestication, and more-than-human socialities to analyze how novel constellations of domestication and shifting terrains of livability unfold. In the Mat-Su, agriculture emerges historically from colonial histories, policies and projects of American frontier settlement and cultivation. I examine how these histories and projects continue to shape agriculture today, through state fairs and industrializing farming businesses. Focusing on the experiences of farmers who grow food for personal subsistence, I explore the practices and relations that frame their farms and homes as morally grounded, laborious, peasant projects of autonomy and longevity. Working with pastured pigs raised for meat, I delve into the multispecies knowledges and practices that shape their lives and deaths. By being and working close to their animals, farmers enact an ethics of multispecies care and reciprocity. Using my own work as a point of departure, I investigate the constellations of conditional labor that support peasant farming projects and how these challenge traditional configurations of farm labor. Through their work, Alaskan farmers become entangled with overlapping colonial histories, heterogenous materials, and other people, animals, plants, soils, and weather in the pursuit of a “good life”. Exploring how all of these come together to co-shape multispecies landscapes may illuminate ways of living together well in a changing world. Keywords: Alaska, agricultural assemblage, peasantries, domestication practices, loss and wonder

• Hartikainen, Elina Inkeri & Nikolaou, Chryso (2026). Main Title : Working with the Uncontrollability of Physical and Digital Materials Subtitle: From Puppet/Object Theatre to Embodied Artificial Intelligence in Digital Performative Arts. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This thesis develops a comparative ethnography of human engagements with the uncontrollability of physical materials in contemporary European puppet and object theatre and with the digital materials of embodied artificial intelligence within digital performative arts. Motivated by broader anxieties surrounding the possibility that artificial intelligence may exceed human control, the thesis seeks to examine whether uncontrollability emerges as a condition specific to artificial intelligence or whether it already constitutes human engagements with material processes more broadly, and, if so, through which ontological assumptions controllability comes to be constituted as a self-evident condition of human–material relations. To explore this, the analysis begins with puppeteers’ engagements with physical materials and then moves comparatively toward artistic practices involving embodied artificial intelligence.

• Engebretsen, Elisabeth Lund & Stenroos, Hulda Sofia Obrestad (2026). How do Drag Artists Experience themselves as Part of a Drag Community? An Ethnographic Study of Drag Work and Activism in Toronto and a US Organization. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This ethnographic study of drag in Toronto and the US organization Qommittee is approached through the research question: “How do drag artists experience their relation to a drag community”. Drag has become increasingly controversial in the contemporary political climate in the US, to the extent that the phrase “war on drag” has been coined (Newberry 2023). As it becomes increasingly difficult to perform drag in the US, Qommittee mobilizes to support drag artists through insecurity. In the face of this precarious situation, how does community mobilization become important in times of political tension? At the same time, Smith (2025) argues that RuPaul's Drag Race has had impacts on local communities. In Toronto, an oversaturated and competitive market for drag opens for questions surrounding how this affects creativity and community. Community is studied as something two-fold: as imagined communities (Anderson 1983; Winer 2020) and as communities of practice (Wegner 2007). The research for this study is based on ethnographic fieldwork through participant observation and interviews in the drag scene in Toronto and an internship with Qommitte. This transnational study of drag and community, insecurity (Holbraad and Pedersen 2013), utopian potentials (Khubchandani 2023, Muñoz 2009), commodification (Smith 2025, LeBlanc 2024), and the idea of political responsibility are identified as key influences in the lives of the drag artists and studied in relation to each other.

• Holthe, Idunn Lüllau & Workinn, Nora Ingeborg Mortensen (2026). The Sensing Tourist: Embodiment, Space‑Making and the Social Life of Spiritual Tourists in Luxor. Universitetet i Oslo. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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