In this episode, we speak with Alessandro Rippa about amber – a fossilised resin that not only allow us a glimpse into prehistoric lifeforms and climatic conditions millions of years ago but also works as an entry point into understanding current political, scientific, and commercial frictions. Alessandro is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, at the University of Oslo, where he leads the ERC Starting Grant project called “Amber Worlds: A Geological Anthropolo...

In this episode, we are in company with Hans Lucht to talk about ethnographic poetry. Hans is a senior researcher, and the head of migration research at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in Copenhagen. He has worked with migration for 20 years, with a special focus on undocumented labour-related migration from West Africa to Europe. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in Ghana, Niger, Libya, Italy, and Greece, and his prize-winning monograph ‘Darkness before Daybreak’ chr...

Welcome to a special two-episode series of Anthropology on Air! In this and the previous podcast, you will listen to selected parts of a lecture series on the subject of slavery and freedom with professor of Sociology at Harvard University, Orlando Patterson. The lectures were held in December 2023 at various locations in London and were recorded by our colleague, Rolf Scott. This episode features the second lecture given by Patterson titled ‘Slavery and Genocide: Jamaica, the U...

In this and the following podcast, you will listen to selected parts of a lecture series on the subject of slavery and freedom with professor of Sociology at Harvard University, Orlando Patterson. The lectures were held in December 2023 at various locations in London and were recorded by our colleague, Rolf Scott. This episode features the first lecture given by Patterson titled ‘The Paradox of Freedom: a Socio-Historical Approach’, held at the Royal Anthropological Institute in London...

Welcome to a special episode of Anthropology on Air.In this episode you will hear the recordings of the 2024 Fredrik Barth Memorial Lecture, held by Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern. The episode begins with an introduction by Synnøve Bendixen who is head of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. Strathern then takes us on a historical and global tour through various ethnographic signposts from the Melanesian Baktaman to current activism, on this tour, inviting us t...

In this episode, we speak with Karin Lillevold, a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion at the University of Bergen. As part of the research project Gardening the Globe, Karin traces relations between three species that are increasingly coming into contact with each another: muskoxen, wild reindeer, and humans. Karin’s interest is in how these relations are managed, as well as the aesthetics and performance of wilderness, i...

In this episode we speak with Martjin Oosterbaan. Martjin is professor at the department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University, with a chair in the Anthropology of Religion and Security. He has done more than two decades of research in Brazil, focusing on topics such as urban and religious transformation, security and citizenship, and the role of mass media and popular culture in identity formation. He currently leads the ERC Consolidator research project: Sacralizing Security in Meg...

Welcome to season 4 of Anthropology on Air! With autumn on the way in Bergen, we kick off a new season with a resident of another North Sea city: dr. Andrew Whitehouse. Andrew is a multispecies, environmental anthropologist and a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Aberdeen with a lifelong interest in birdwatching, the main topic of our conversation today.We begin with how Andrew’s own bird-watching – mostly carried out at his local ‘patch’ of Girdle Ness, a promontory next to Aberd...

In this episode, the finale to season 3, we speak with Atreyee Sen, Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. Our topic of discussion is a talk Atreyee gave at our department entitled, ‘No city for lovers: Urban poverty, public romance and violent moral policing of lower-class female youth in Mumbai’, which is based on her award-winning article in the interdisciplinary journal Critical Asian Studies. In it, Atreyee explores the aggressive spatial m...

In this episode, we speak with Martin Eggen Mogseth and Fartein Hauan Nilsen about their first edited volume, Limits of Life: Reflections on Life, Death, and the Body in the Age of Technoscience (Berghahn Books, 2024). The book explores how fundamental concepts such as life, birth, selfhood, religion, death, and ancestry are being reshaped in an era of rapid technological changes, from a transhumanist movement seeking to disrupt death, to digital avatars ‘replicating’ deceased loved ones and ...

In this episode of Anthropology on Air, we speak with Penny Harvey, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester in the UK. Penny is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and the Academia Europaea.Penny is a highly influential thinker on the topic of infrastructures. She is well known for her 2015 book about highway-building in South America, Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise (Cornell UP), which she co-wrote ...

In this special episode, we speak with Tomas Salem, a PhD fellow in our own department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. We do a deep dive on some of the themes covered in Tomas’s first book, Policing the Favelas in Rio de Janeiro: Cosmologies of War and the Far-Right (Palgrave Macmillian, 2024), which is released this week. Based on fieldwork Tomas conducted in 2015 when he was a Master’s student here, the book explores the links between militarized policing and far-right i...

To kick off season three of Anthropology on Air, we speak with Andrea Muehlebach. Andrea is Professor of Maritime Anthropology and Cultures of Water at the University of Bremen in Germany, where she also leads the Bremen NatureCultureLab. She was visiting Bergen to deliver a talk entitled, “Do Waves Have Rights?”The Rights of Nature movement insists that “nature has a dignity, outside and in excess of its use to humans,” Andrea explains. In this conversation, we discuss Andrea’s current resea...

Tanya Luhrmann is Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in Psychology, and an elected member of the American Philosophical Society. Her work focuses on the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. She has conducted ethnographic work among groups such as evangelic Christians, American Santerians, Zoroastrians in India, magicians in England, and people hearing voices across cul...

In this episode, you will meet professor at the University of Oxford, Harvey Whitehouse. Harvey is the director of the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, he is Statutory Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Fellow of Magdalen College. Harvey has worked extensively with rituals since his first long-term fieldwork in Papua New Guinea in 1980s. His list of publications includes myriads of interdisciplinary contributions, articles, and edited volumes ...

In this episode you will meet Jennifer Hays, who is professor in social anthropology at the University of Tromsø (UiT) – the Arctic University of Norway. Jennifer has been working with hunter-gatherer San Populations in southern Africa for 25 years, as a researcher, and as a consultant for governmental bodies and local and international NGOs. She is, among other things, a founding member of the Hunter Gatherer Education Research and Advocacy Group (HG-Edu), a board member of the Kalahar...

This episode is the first of two podcasts focusing on the longstanding partnership between Bergen and Khartoum. The first episode provides a historical view into some of the main characteristics and effects of the academic collaborations between these two cities. The second episode features an interview with Sudanese professor of law, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, who offers a framework for how we can think about the past and imagine the future of the people of Sudan. In this episode, you wi...

This episode is the second of two podcasts focusing on the longstanding partnership between Bergen and Khartoum. In the episode you will meet, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, who visited Bergen in October 2023 to give the keynote lecture at a 3-day symposium that marked the 60-year anniversary of this collaboration. An-Na’im is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law, associated professor in the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, and senior fellow of the Center for the Study of L...

This episode’s guest, George Paul Meiu, is professor of anthropology and chair of the institute of social anthropology at the University of Basel and associate in the departments of anthropology and African and African American studies at Harvard University.George’s research and teaching focus on sexuality, gender, and kinship; ethnicity, belonging and citizenship; mobility, memory, and materiality; and the political economy of East Africa and Eastern Europe. He is the author of the prize-win...

In this episode you will meet Veronica Strang, who is a professor of anthropology currently affiliated with Oxford University. Her research focuses on human-environmental relations, and in particular, societies’ engagements with water, encompassing conflicts over ownership and governance; cultural beliefs and values; human and non-human rights; and people´s sensory and cognitive interactions with water. Veronica’s main ethnographic research has been conducted in Australia, New Zealand, and th...