Tom Bratrud is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology and part of the project Private Lives: Embedding Sociality at Digital 'Kitchen-tables'. His research focuses on values, social life and political dynamics in the South Pacific and Nordics.
Bratrud’s current research examines everyday life with digital technology in rural Norway. Focus areas include (1) how digital technologies enable new forms of urban-rural mobility, (2) farmers’ need to expand and automatise to comply with new demands from the government and market, and (3) reality formation in enmeshed online/offline worlds.
Bratrud's initial research focuses on the intersection of religion, morality and politics of land in Vanuatu. This work, based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork from 2010-2017, has resulted in the monograph Fire on the Island: Fear, Hope and a Christian Revival in Vanuatu (2022, Berghahn Books). The book examines a startling child-led Christian revival movement that developed on Ahamb Island in 2014 as a social and ethical reform in the wake of enduring political disputes. However, the movement had a dramatic turn when two men claimed to be sorcerers and responsible for many of the community’s problems were killed. The book’s main theoretical contribution concerns how fear and hope are powerful sentiments that work together to become a potent driving force for change, but where the outcome can easily escape the initiators' control.
Interview about Tom's research in Norway and Vanuatu on Sophie Chao's Morethanhumanworlds.
Academic Interests
Topics: Social organisation, religion/worldviews, values, environmental issues, resource politics, continuity/change, urban-rural dynamics, digitalisation.
Regional interests: The South Pacific, the Nordics
Teaching
- SOSANT 3090 - Bachelor Essay
- SOSANT 2630 - Digital Anthropology
- SOSANT 2530 - Development
- SOSANT 2160 - Regional Ethnography: Oceania
- SOSANT 1400 - Religion and Cosmology
- SOSANT 1090 - History of Anthropology
- SOSANT 1050 - Ethnographic Method
- NORINT 0500 - Norwegian Life and Society
- SOSANT 1000 - Introduction to Social Anthropology
Higher education and employment history
Education:
- PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, 2018
- MA in Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, 2011
Other and previous academic positions:
- Subject manager, Vanuatu, The Great Norwegian Encyclopedia (SNL.no), 2023-
- Associate Professor, Department of Culture, Religion and Social Studies, University of South-Eastern Norway, 2019-2021.
- Senior lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, 2018-2019.
- Seminar leader, Religion and Power, Kulturstudier/Oslo Metropolitan University (Pondicherry, India), 2011.
Research projects
- 2021-24: Persistence and Change in Social Formations: Digital Everyday Lives in Rural Norway (NSD project # 912121)
- 2023: Commoning and Privatization of Land in Norway and the South-Pacific (visiting scholar project, University of Sydney)
- 2020-22: Local Communities and Part-Time Residents in Rural Norway (NSD project # 930504)
- 2013-17: Land, Sea, Life: Engagements in the Wider World (doctoral project)
- 2009-11: Finding Ways: Community and its Challenges on Ahamb, Vanuatu (MA project)
Honoraria and grants
- 2023: Overseas Research Grant for Postdoctoral Fellows, The Norwegian Research Council
- 2022: Article of the year 2021 (with Marianne E. Lien). Norwegian Anthropological Association
- 2019: Research grant, Johannes Falkenberg's Foundation
- 2017: Fieldwork grant, The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture
- 2012: Article of the year 2011, Betwixt and Between - Annual of the Master Students. Norwegian Anthropological Association
- 2010: Fieldwork grant, The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture
- 2010: Signe Howell's fieldwork stipend, Norwegian Anthropological Association
Cooperation
- School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney (affiliate)
- Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group, University of Bergen (group member)
- Valdres Museum (project member in Eit skigardsdele - From Mountain Pasture to Hytte Industry, led by Ole Aastad Bråten)
- Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) (project member in Fjellbeite: Changes in Outfield Grazing – Causes, impacts and Measures, led by Bjørn Egil Flø)