Institut for Antropologi > Forskning > Kerneområder
Research Areas
In 2013 Department of Anthropology will implement a new research organization which will partly dissolve the research areas presented here (see Researcher groups for the new organization).
The Department of Anthropology represents a broad approach to anthropology. This diversity is expressed in regional foci, theoretical orientation and methodology, and results in a dynamic practice of anthropology, acutely aware of its own traditions and upcoming challenges.
The research of the Department falls in five core areas:
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Health and life conditions
The anthropology of health has been a priority area at the department since the 1980s. Over the years, teaching, research and PhD training have developed and diversified this field. Starting with an interest in culturally specific perceptions of illness and therapeutic itineraries, the field has taken on a more global perspective, while maintaining commitment to in-depth ethnography.
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Globalisation, Conflict and Security
Firmly grounded in political anthropology, the researchers are increasingly focusing on the multi-facetted processes, which generate conflicts and cause security concerns in a global context. Empirically, this research ranges from fieldwork among revolutionary and religious movements in Latin America’s slum cities, to development projects in the Third World, mobilisation processes and militant networks in Africa and South Asia, and to humanitarian and/or military rehabilitation initiatives in post-conflict societies.
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Migration and Social Mobility
A significant part of the earlier departmental research on migrations has been based on the Global South, especially South America, the Caribbean and Africa, and has investigated mobility as a social, economic and cultural resource in the dynamic tension between envisaged and actualised migration. In parallel to this more globally oriented fieldwork, since the 1990s integration research with focus on the situation of immigrants and refugees in Denmark has emerged as a strong theme.
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Organisation, Materiality and Creativity
This young field of ethnographic research and anthropological theorising combines on the one hand the long tradition for the anthropological study of organisations and their internal dynamics in their contexts, and on the other, economic exchanges and markets, production and consumption, as well as values and materiality.
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Society and Nature
In the 21st century a pronounced new interest in nature has emerged, because climate change has become a significant item on the global agenda and also because many of the societies that anthropologists work in are already affected by new challenges from environmental changes of varying scale. As such, nature is intruding into much of the fieldwork conducted by the department’s staff and students, whether it directly concerns climate change or other issues.
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