Department seminars
The Department of Social Anthropology has arranged regular seminars since the early 1960's.
Main content
The Department Seminars has for years invited both internal and external contributors to present their research to staff and students at the department, as well as other interested parties from academics at the University of Bergen and beyond.
The talk is held for about 45 minutes, followed by a 30 minutes discussion, before a casual gathering with light refreshments.
Each semester a new member of the academic staff at the department is responsible for inviting guests. This contributes to a varying selection of themes and guests which gives an image of the departments extensive thematic and regional interests.
2025
Spring
February 6, 14:15-15:30
Hans Lucht: Our Lives Are Shaking: Migration, Methods, and Ethnographic Poetry
March 6, 14:15-15:30
Stuart Earle Strange: The Interactive Commons: Monkeys and Gods reveal everyday Communism
April 3, 14:15-15:30
Sian Lazar: States of suspension. Life in Argentina's political laboratory
May 8, 14:15-15:30
Petra Rethmann: TBA
May 22, 14:15-15:30
Ingjerd Hoëm: TBA
Autumn
September 11, 14:15-15:30
Alessandro Rippa: Amber Worlds: Extraction, Exchanges, and the State at China's borderlands
October 16, 14:15-15:30
Katy Overstreet: TBA
November 13, 14:15-15:30
David Shankland: TBA
2024
Spring
February 8, 14:15-16:00
André Iteanu (École Pratique des Hautes Études): Natural and biological diversity: What Melanesia may teach us
February 15, 14:15-16:00
Knut M. Rio (University Museum of Bergen): On the question of indigenous sovereignty and settler-states
February 22, 14:15-16:00
Filip De Boeck (University of Leuven): Scaling the city: visual and vertical modes to write Kinshasa
March 21, 14:15-16:00
Andrea Muehlebach ( University of Bremen): Do Waves have Rights?
April 18, 14:15-16:00
Penny Harvey ( University of Manchester): Thinking "in time" about the deep future - nuclear waste and the possibilities of ethnography
May 2, 14:15-16:00
Jayaseelan Raj ( King's College London): Ghettos of the state: Spatiality of caste in Kerala
May 23, 14:15-16:00
Kelly McKowen ( Southern Methodist University): Down and Out in Utopia: Unemployment, Morality, and Social Democracy in Norway
June 13, 14:15-16:00
Atreeye Sen (University of Copenhagen): "No city for lovers": Urban poverty, public romance and violent moral policing of lower-class female youth in Mumbai
Fall
August 31, 13:15-15:00
Alpa Shah (London School of Economics): Thinking through decolonization and the search for democracy in India
September 14, 13:15-15:00
Chloe Nahum-Claudel (University of Manchester) : Witchcraft and Patriarchy: Punishment and Speech in Postcolonial Papua New Guinea Witch Hunts
October 5, 13:15-15:00
Matti Eräsaari (University of Helsinki): Taxation as world-making? Tax standards in Fiji
October 26, 13:15-15:00
Luis Fernando Angosto Ferràndez (University of Sydney): National flags, social instability, and the power that controls society: an anthropological take on political subjectivities
November 2, 13:15-15:00
Jennifer Hays (University of Tromsø): ‘It’s how we get food, and it’s who we are’ Hunter-gatherer food systems and education in a changing world
December 7, 13:15-15:00
Peter Lockwood (University of Manchester): Patronage as predation: Hunting for cash in Kenyan elections
Spring
February 9, 13:15-15:00
Hege Høyer Leivestad (University of Oslo): Container Economies at the Strait of Gibraltar
March 9, 13:15-15:00
Katherine Smith (University of Manchester): The Architects of Ruins: Ending Friendships and Reaffirming Networks of Support in North Manchester, England
March 23, 13:15-15:00
Tom Bratrud (University of Oslo): Fear and Hope: Complementary Drivers of Change in Vanuatu and Beyond
March 30, 13:15-15:00
Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University): Dominion in Thin Disguise: Outrageous Comparison and the Racism of Crypto-Colonialism
April 20, 13:15-15:00
Michael Degani (University of Cambridge): Towards a Modal Anthropology: How Humans (and other Animals) Sense the Possibility Space of a Shared World
May 4, 13:15-15:00
Matthew Carey (University of Copenhagen): Love without Grief: On Losing a Child in the Moroccan High Atlas
May 25, 13:15-15:00
Veronica Strang (University of Oxford): Rising from the Deep: The Role of Indigenous Water Beings in Conflicts over Water
June 8, 13:15-15:00
George Paul Meiu (University of Basel): Queer Objects and Intimate Citizenship in Kenya
2022
Fall
September 1, 14:15-16:00
Svathi Shah (University of Massachusetts Amherst): The Art of Ethnographic Failure: Lessons on Theorizing form Fieldnote for Queer South Asian Anthropology
September 8, 14:15-16:00
Geir Henning Presterudstuen (University of Bergen): The Social Work of Ghosts: Spaces, Place and more than-human relations in Fijii
September 22, 14:15-16:00
Rupert Stasch (University of Cambridge): Exotic Otherness in Practice: White Tourists and Papuan Hosts
October 6, 14:15-16:00
David G. Andersen (University of Aberdeen): Artic Food Sovereignty as a Critique of Libiral Capitalism
October 20, 14:15-16:00
Adom Philogene Heron (Goldsmiths, University of London): Rivers Have Memory
November 17, 14:15-16:00
Jaap Timmer (Macquarie University and Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University): Divining the Past: Kinshipping and Temporal Sovereignty in Solomon Islands
November 3, 14:15-16:00
Professor Paula Uimonen (Stockholm University): “From Fishing to Farming: Sea Cucumbers and Sustainability on the Swahili Coast”
Spring
February 3, 14:15-16:00
Harry Izmirlian (Ball State University): The Doors of Perception: Systems of Knowledge as Universializations of Human Experience
February 24, 14:15-16:00
William Dawley (University of Bergen): Homo Habilis: Social Technologies and Technologized Societies
March 17, 14:15-16:00
Knut Kolnar (Norwegian Business School): Planned Obsolescence
March 24, 14:15-16:00
Martin Lundsteen (University of Oxford): Dispersing the Other to Unite the Nation:The Ghetto Law in Denmark
April 7, 14:15-16:00
Besim Can Zırh (Middle East Technical University): Marxloh’s Bridal Fashion Mile: A Trans-Local Hub for Organizing Weddings in the Context of Migration
April 21, 14:15-16:00
Tom Are Trippestad (University College Bergen): Rhetoric of a Reform - the Construction of Public, Management and the New in New Public Manage
May 3, 14:15-16:00
Abou Farman (The New School for Social Research, NY): Impossible Futures - Immortality, Anti-natalism and Re-generation at the End of the World
May 5, 14:15-16:00
Heath Cabot (University of Pittsburgh): Regendering the Political in GrassrootsHealthcare Mobilizations in Greece
May 19, 14:15-16:00
Jennifer Telesca (Pratt Institute): Fishing for the Anthroposcene: Time-Space in Ovean Governance
June 2, 14:15-16:00
Jan Breman (University of Amsterdam): Alexis de Tocqueville on Class and Race
June 15, 14:15-16:00
Jenny Huberman (University of Missouri): The Spirit of the Gift and the Work of Techno-Philanthropy
2021
Autumn
September 23, 14:15-16:00
Oana Mateescu, Marc Morell, and Don Kalb (Univ. of Bergen): ‘Leftovers’, ‘Entrepots’, and Other Episodes of Frontline Reporting
October 21, 14:15-16:00
Keir Martin (Univ. of Oslo): The Reality of Dreams and the Dream of Reality: tubuans and corporations in East New Britain and beyond
October 28, 14:15-16:00
Rolf Scott (Univ. of Bergen): The Technologies of the Point-Global Self
November 11, 14:15-16:00
Seminar in Honor of Professor Olaf Smedal (University of Bergen). With Runar Døving (Kristiania University College), Signe Howell (University of Oslo), and Bjørn E. Bertelsen, Bruce Kapferer, Knut Rio, Rolf Scott (University of Bergen)
November 18, 14:15-16:00
Hans Lucht (Danish Institute for International Studies): Distressed: Migrant Underworlds and Travels in Hyporeality
December 2, 14:15-16:00
Katerini T. Storeng (Univ. of Oslo): The Many Meanings of ‘Sharing’ Within theGlobal Vaccine-Sharing Scheme COVAX
December 16, 14:15-16:00
Henry Bernstein (Univ. of London): Agrarian Questions. Past and Present
Spring
April 14, 13:15-15:00
Kevin M. Cahill (Univ. of Bergen): Interpretivism and One of its Discontents
May 11, 13:15-15:00
Theodoros Rakopoulos (Univ. of Oslo): 'One Homeland, Two Republics': Thinking about the Vernacular State in the Cypriot Postcolony
May 25, 13:15-15:00
Natalia Buier (Max Planck Inst. for Social Anthropology, Halle): Technological Modernization, Green Capitalism and Green Deals Through the Prism of the Spanish HSR Project
June 10, 14:30-16:30
Jaume Franquesa (State Uni. of New York, at Buffalo): Green Patriots? The Rise of Right-wing Populism ands the Formation of an Authoritarian Environmentalism in Spain
2020
Autumn
October 28, 13:00-15:30
Rolf Scott and Olaf H. Smedal (University of Bergen): Screening of "The Lost Child"
Spring
January 30, 13:15-15:00
Ragnhild Freng Dale (Western Norway Research Inst.): Elusive Promises and Community Expectations: Petroleum Narratives by the Norwegian Barents Sea
February 13, 13:15-15:00
John A. McNeish (Norwegian Univ. of Life Sciences): Riverine rights: Exploring the Currents and Consequences of Legal Innovations
March 5, 13:15-15:00
Maggie Bolton (Univ. of Aberdeen): The Fragility of Relations of Domestication: Humans, Llamas and Unseasonal Snowfalls in Sud Lípez, Bolivia
2019
Autumn
August 15, 13:15-15:00
Lauren Coyle Rosen (Princeton University): The Spiritual Laws of Gold: Time, Space, and Mining Rituals in Ghana
August 29, 13:15-15:00
Marianna Betti (University of Bergen): The “Syncretic Oil Complex” and the Destructive and Generative Powers of Oil: cases from Turkana, Northern Kenya
September 13.
Bergen Anthropology Day
September 19, 13:15-15:00
Andrew Canessa (University of Essex): Indigenous conflict in Bolivia explored through an African lens: Towards a comparative analysis of indigeneity
October 3, 13:15-15:00
Marianne Lien (University of Oslo): Dreams of prosperity - Enactments of growth. The rise and fall of forming in Varanger
October 17, 13:15-15:00
David Scott (Columbia University): Thinking about Evil
October 18.
Fredrik Barth Lecture
October 31,13:15-15:00
George Paul Meiu (Harvard University): Panics over Plastics: Queer Objects, Moral Pollution, and the Materialities of Belonging in Kenya
November 14, 13:15-15:00
María A. Guzman-Gallegos (VID): What is 'toxic' in a landscape of changing bodies and chronically unstable diseases? Oil extraction in the Peruvian Amazonia
November 29, 13:15-15:00
Anya Bernstein (Harvard University): The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia (Please note, this is on a Friday)
December 12, 13:15-15:00
Ståle Knudsen (University of Bergen): ENERGETHICS - Norwegian energy companies abroad. Expanding the anthropological understanding of corporate social responsibility
Spring
January 17, 14:15-16:00
Matei Candea (University of Cambridge): On visual coherence and visual excess: writing, diagrams and anthropological form
January 31, 14:15-16:00
Vito Laterza (Universitetet i Agder): Towards an anthropological theory of wealthy enclaves: reflections from fieldwork in Swaziland, South Africa and Mauritius
February 14, 14:15-16:00
Antonio de Lauri (Chr. Michelsen Institute): The Taliban and the Humanitarian Soldier: Freedom and Humanity in Afghanistan
February 21, 14:15-16:00
Fenella Cannell (London School of Economics and Political Science): Bodies in the snow: Mormon women, apostasy and ‘life writing’ as religious practice
March 14, 14:15-16:00
Maria Louw (Aarhus University): Leaving oneself to the care of others: reflections on finitude, care and community in Kyrgyzstan
March 21, 14:15-16:00
Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne): The patriarchal management of what to keep and what to give of oneself in the making of Lebanon’s diasporic modernity
Lecture in in cooperation with SKOK and IMER
4. April, 14:15-16:00
Dr. Camelia Dewan (University of Oslo) ‘Climate Change as a ‘Spice’: Brokering Environmental Knowledge in Bangladeshi Development Projects’
25. April, 14:15-16:00
Jon Barnett (University of Melbourne) ‘The dilemmas of normalising losses from climate change: Towards hope for Pacific atoll countries’
9. May, 14:15-16:00
Neil Carrier (University of Bristol) ‘Mobile phones, people and photography: Somali visual practices in Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate’
13. June, 11:15-13:00
Jemima Pierre (University of Los Angeles) ‘Problems of Ethnography and Imperialism: Some Notes on West Africa’
20. June, 14:15-16:00
Dr. Stine Krøijer (University of Copenhagen) ‘The non-relational forest: trees, oil palms and the limits to relational ontology in lowland Ecuador’
2018
Autumn
6 September, 14:15-16:00
Miriam Driessen (University of Oxford): Laughing about corruption in Ethiopian-Chinese encounters
14 September: Bergen Anthropology Day 2018
27 September, 14:15-16:00
Mathijs Pelkmans (London School of Economics and Political Science): Frontier Dynamics: Topological Reflections on Evangelical and Tablighi Missions in Central Asia
4 October, 14:15-16:00
Dace Dzenovska (University of Oxford): Political Liberalism After the Cold War: Critical Perspectives from Eastern Europe
26 October: The Fredrik Barth Memorial Lecture 2018
1 November, 14:15-16:00
Florian Muehlfried (Friedrich Schiller University): Mistrust Machine: How Georgian Hospitality Works
8 November, 14:15-16:00
Ole Johannes Kaland (NLA Høgskolen Bergen): Cultivating Quality with Chalk: Increasing Differences in the Chinese Educational System
29 November, 14:15-16:00
Elisabeth Schober (University of Oslo): Tears of Malmö, Hope of Pusan. Infrastructures of Resistance in South Korean Shipbuilding
6 December, 14:15-16:00
Mette High (University of St. Andrews): Projects of Devotion: Energy Exploration and Moral Ambition in the Cosmoeconomy of Oil in the Western United States
Spring
25 January, 14:15-16:00
Lizhu Fan og Na Chen (Fudan University, Shanghai): Revival of confucianism in China
8 February, 14:15-16:00
Sarah Tobin Chr. Michelsens Institute (CMI): Sectarianism and Identity Among Syrian Refugees in Jordan
22 March, 14:15-16:00
Sverker Finnström (Uppsala University): Brokers and breakers of war stories in northern Uganda
12 April, 14:15-16:00
Julie Zahle (University of Bergen): Epistemic Values and Multiple Methods in Social Research
20 April, 12:00-14:00, 9. et. Det samfunnsvitenskapelige fakultet (NB: note the day and time)
Paul Gilroy (Kings College London): The Value of Antiracism
26 April: 14:15-16:00
Kerry Chance (University of Bergen): Living Politics in South Africa's Urban Shacklands
2017
Autumn
8 September, 14:15-15:30 (NB: Friday)
Christopher Gaffney (University of Zürich): Rendering the Games: the essence of the mega-event accumulation regime
21 September, 14:15-15:30
Andrew Lattas (Dept. of Social Anthropology, UiB): The Baining as “the most boring culture in the world”: ontology, politics and the rise of cognitive psychology
5 October, 14:15-15:30
Hedda Askland (University of Newcastle): An ethnography of loss: mining, conquest and time in rural Australia
12 October, 14:15-15:30
Espen Helgesen (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences): Like clockwork: Retrofuturism in steampunk cosplay
19 October, 14:15-15:30
Frode Storaas (University Museum of Bergen): Cooling and Cleansing – in Kilimanjaro
25 October, 14:15-15:30 NB: Wednesday
Morana Alač (University of California San Diego): Smelling Something: Speaking the Ineffable in Everyday Practice of Olfactory Science
2 November, 14:15-15:30
Mari Rolf Scott (Inst. for sosialantropologi, UiB): The road to hell is paved with good intentions
9 November, 14:15-15:30
Axel Rudi (Dept. of Social Anthropology, UiB):The PKK's Newroz: Transcending the Division between Millitants and Civillian
16 November, 14:15-15:30
Ruth J. Prince: Ruination, refusal and the body politic: Struggles for the public's health in Kenya
23 November, 14:15-15:30
Margit Ystanes (Dept. of Social Anthropology, UiB): Screening of "Dirty Games: Olympic Evictions in Rio de Janeiro"
30 November, 14:15-15:30
Jacob Hjortsberg (Dept. of Social Anthropology, UiB): Saving for a future that may never come: Singapore's pension system and its discontents
7 December, 14:15-15:30
Mari H. C. Korsbrekke (Dept. of Social Anthropology, UiB): Paradoxes of egalitarianism in intentional communities
Spring
16 February, 14:15-15:30
Marina Gold (University of Bergen): Egalitarianism, Democracy and the Corporate State: The case of Switzerland
2 March, 14:15-15:30
Steven Sampson (University of Lund): Moral capitalism: the emergence of business ethics and compliance
23 March, 14:15-15:30
Felix Stein (University of Cambridge): Profitable uncertainties
20 April, 14:15-15:30
Sarah Green (University of Helsinki): Locating animals and their diseases: a short history of animal borders, quarantine and surveillance in Europe
4 May, 14:15-15:30
Niko Bensier (University of Amsterdam): Rethinking Masculinity through Sport: Cameroonian Footballers, Senegalese Wrestlers, and Fijian Rugby Boys
11 May, 14:15-15:30
Jamie Cross (University of Edinburgh): Cancelled
18 May, 14:15-15:30
Marek Szilvasi (European Roma Rights Centre): Water exclusion: the case of Roma people in Europe
2016
Autumn
15 September, 14:15-15:30
Don Kalb (Central European University): Some Preliminary Conversations on Anthropology, Capitalism and Value
22 September, 14:15-15:30
Ruy Llera Blanes (CSIC): The Luanda Stereoscope: Perspective, In-Visibility, Urban Experience and Political Struggle in Post-War Angola
13 October, 14:15-15:30
Aina Begim (University of Pittsburgh): Unequal Financial Markets: Space, Time, and Profit
27 October, 14:15-15:30
Sian Lazar (University of Cambridge): Seeking a 'Kinship Anthropology of Politics': Interest, Ethical Subjectivation and Kinship in Argentine Unions
17 November, 14:15-15:30
TBA
1 December, 14:15-15:30
Andrea Behrends (Martin Luther Universität): No Boon at All. Oil Extraction and Social Change in Chad
8 December, 14:15-15:30
Cathrine Brun (Oxford Brookes University): Expanding Ethical Registers in Humanitarianism? Practices and Experiences of Assisting in the Syrian Refugee Crisis
Spring
21 January, 14:15-15:30
Ricardo Pérez Montfort (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México ): The Early Cultural History of Drugs in Mexico
10 March, 14:15-15:30
Sindre Bangstad (University of Oslo): Anthropological Publics, Public Anthropology
7 April, 14:15-15:30
José Mapril (New University of Lisbon): Placing the Future: Remigration, Citizenship and Relatedness among London’s Portuguese-Bangladeshis
12 May, 14:15-15:30
Joël Noret (Université Libre de Bruxelles): Thinking of Religious Controversies with Latour? Debating Catholic Funerals in Southern Benin
2015
Autumn
20 August, 14:15-15:30
Simon Coleman (University of Toronto): Undiscovered Country: The Anthropologist as Agnoiologist
27 August, 14:15-15:30
Bruce Grant (New York University): The Donkey Wars: Authority, Satire, and the Political Imagination in the Caucasus
10 September, 14:15-15:30
Keir Martin (University of Oslo): Reforming Custom and Managing Conflict in East New Britain
17 September, 14:15-15:30
Aparecida Vilaça (Museu Nacional Rio de Janeiro): Versions versus Bodies: Translations in the Missionary Encounter in Amazonia
24 September, 14:15-15:30
Carlos Fausto (Museu Nacional Rio de Janeiro): Conflict, Peace, and Social Reform in Indigenous Amazonia: A Deflationary Account
1 October, 14:15-15:30
Susanne Wessendorf (University of Birmingham): Commonplace Diversity: Social Relations in an Era of Super-Diversity
2 October, 14:15-15:30
Catherine Lutz (Brown University): The Costs of War Project NB! Friday
15 October
The Fredrik Barth Honorary Lecture, time and place to be announced
22 October, 14:15-15:30
Lorenzo Cañás Bottos (University of Trondheim): Levantines in Argentina: Narratives of Migration and Integration
28 October, 14:15-15:30
Dinah Rajak (University of Sussex): Hope and Betrayal on the Platinum Belt: Responsibility, Violence and Corporate Power in South Africa NB! Wednesday
12 November, 14:15-15:30
Andrea Bender (University of Bergen): The Cultural Dimension of Cognition
26 November, 14:15-15:30
Karen Olwig (University of Copenhagen): Purity and Dirt: West Indian Nurses as “Matter out of Place” in Britain
3 December, 14:15-15:30
Thomas H. Eriksen (University of Oslo): Scale and Social Organization, 2015, with illustrations from Gladstone, Queensland
17 December, 14:15-15:30
Frances Pine (Goldsmiths University of London): Regimes, Moralities and Temporalities: Entitlement, Movement and Livelihood in the "Age of Migration"
Spring
15 Januray, 13.15-15.00
Gunnar Håland (UiB): The History of the Establishment of the Department and the Fredrik Barth Legacy
22 January, 13.15-15.00
Tone Bringa (UiB), Edvard Hviding (UiB), Gunnar Sørbø (CMI): Engaged Anthropology and the Bergen Department
29 January, 15.15-15.00
Frode Storaas (University Museum of Bergen): Our concepts and ways of seeing the world are being challenged by the Ontological Turn. Is anthropological filmmaking the answer? Screening and Introduction of the film "Tama Gaun: The Copper Village"
5 February, 13.15-15.00
Maurice Bloch (London School of Economics): An Evolutionary Approach to the Beginnings of Religion and the Collapse of States
12 February, 13.15-15.00
Ståle Knudsen (UiB) and Gunnar Håland (UiB): From Niche to Assemblage: Ecological Anthropology at the Bergen Department of Social Anthropology.
19 February, 13.15-15.00
Tony Crook (University of St. Andrews): Fredrik Barth, the Baktaman and Bolivip
5 March, 13.15-15.00
Members of the department’s Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group: Across the Pacific: Places, Themes, Anthropologies
12 March, 13.15-15.00
Annelin Eriksen (UiB), Ruy Blanes (UiB) and Michelle McCarthy (UiB): Experiments in Anthropological Comparison
19 March, 13.15-15.00
Penelope Harvey (University of Manchester): The Material and Social Intimacies of Waste Infrastructures
26 March, 13.15-15.00
Anne Karen Bjelland (UiB), Astrid Blystad (Center for International Health, UiB), Frode Fadnes Jacobsen (HiB) and Ane Straume (UiB): Helse- og sosial politikk/medisinsk antropologi
9 April, 13.15-15.00
Tone Bringa (UiB), Leif Manger (UiB), Hege Toje (UiB) and Elina Troscenko (UiB): From Boundaries to Borders: Territorializing Space in Eurasia
23 April, 13.15-15.00
Members of the department’s Egalitarianism project: In the Event: A Mancunian Transplant in Bergen
7 May, 13.15-15.00
Members of the department’s research group ”Norske Rom”: Antropologi om Norge/Anthropologizing Norway and Norwegians
21 May, 13.15-15.00
Leif Manger, Gunnar Håland and Frode Storås (UiB); Gunnar Sørbø (CMI); Munzoul Assal, Osman M. Osman, Abdel Ghaffar M. Ahmed (University of Khartoum): 50 years of Cooperation Bergen-Khartoum; History and Outcomes
2014
Autumn
27 August:
Samuel Taylor-Alexander (Auckland)
"Nationalizing the Face For Transplantation: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Experimental Biomedicine"
10 September:
Michael Stausberg (UiB)
"The History of Social Anthropology and the History of the Study of Religion\s"
24 September:
Geir Aasmundsen (UiB Global)
"Global Pentecostalism: Holistic Mission, Creation Care and the New 'Horizontal' Evangelization"
01 October:
João Pina Cabral (Kent)
"Towards an Ecumenical Anthropology"
15 October:
Nancy Postero (UCSD)
"Decolonization in Plurinational Bolivia"
29 October:
Maya Mayblin (Edinburgh)
"Failure and Contagion: The Gender of Sin in Contemporary Catholicism"
05 November:
Jon Henrik Remme (UiO)
"The Passion Event: Time, Aesthetics and Perspectives in Ifugao Sacrificial Rituals"
19 November:
Henrik Vigh (Copenhagen)
10 December:
Lynda Newland (St. Andrews)
17 December:
Svati Shah (UMass) (joint seminar with SKOK)
Spring
5 March, 13.15-15.00
Frode Storås and Rolf Scott, UiB
Title of film presentation: "The Go-Between - Afar of Ethiopia"
A film by Frode Storaas, Rolf Scott, and Getachew Kassa
19 March, 13.15-15.00
Marloes Janson, SOAS
"Muslims are Sleeping and We Have to Wake Them Up': Moving Toward Born-Again Islam?"
2 April, 13.15-15.00
Harald Tambs-Lyche, Université de Picardie, Amiens and Centre d’Anthropologie – LISST, Toulouse
"Hierarchy and Stratification in the Late Modern Period (ca. 1920-1960)"
30 April, 13.15-15.00
Hans Lucht, University of Copenhagen
"The Station Hustle: Ghanaian Migration Brokerage in a Disjointed World"
7 May, 13.15-15.00
Astrid Blystad, University of Bergen
"Global Guidelines Setting the Agenda in Local Health Systems: The Case of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV"
21 May, 13.15-15.00
David Price, Saint Martin’s University
"Anthropology and the Recent Growth of Military and Intelligence Programs in the United States"
27 May, 13.15-15.00 (Please note date!)
Angela Hobart, Helen Bamber Foundation, University College London and Centro Incontri Umani
"Regeneration Rituals After the Genocide in Indonesia 1965 – 1966: The Case of the Balinese Governor Suteja"
4. June, 13.15-15.00
Ramon Sarró, University of Oxford
"Revealed Alphabets in Africa: Some Theoretical Considerations on the Works of Prophetic Imagination"
11 June, 13.15-15.00
Guzel Sabirova, St. Petersburg University
"Moral ‘other’ and Symbolic Boundaries: Discourses of Migrantofobia among Young People in Russia"
18 June, 13.15-15.00
John Schoeberlein, Nazarbaev University, Astana, Kazakhstan
"Post-Atheist Secular Sensibilities"
2013
Spring
Thursday, January 10th, 13.15-15.00:
Filip de Boeck, KU Leuven
"Publics, Public Space and the Politics of Infrastructure in Kinshasa"
Thursday, January 17th, 13.15-15.00:
Niko Besnier, University of Amsterdam
"Transgender, Shifting Morality and the Bifocality of Culture"
Thursday, February 7th, 13.15-15.00:
Keir Martin, Manchester University
"Exchanging the Future. Creative Gifts in Papua New Guinea and Beyond"
Thursday, February 21st, 13.15-15.00:
Ismaël Moya, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris
"Economy, Ritual and Urban Sociality in Dakar, Senegal"
Thursday, March 7th, 13.15-15.00:
Rebecca Empson, University College London
"On Owning and Loaning: Tracing the Effects of the Mongolian Wolf Economy at its Borders"
Thursday, March 14th, 13.15-15.00:
Carlo Severi, L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
"The Arts of Memory: Comparative Perspectives on a Mental Artefact"
Thursday, March 21st, 13.15-15.00
Synnøve Bendixsen, Rokkansenteret, UiB
"The Politics of Belonging of Irregular Migrants in Norway"
Thursday, April 18th, 13.15-15.00:
Birgit Meyer, Utrecht University
"How Pictures Matter. Videos, Spirits and the Popular Imagination in Ghana"
Thursday, April 25th, 13.15-15.00:
Magnus Course, University of Edinburgh
"The Hill That Walked Away: The Inconstancy of Land in Rural Mapuche Life"
Thursday, May 23rd, 13.15-15.00:
Isak Niehaus, Brunel University
"Anthropology and Zones of the Extraordinary"
Thursday, June 6th, 13.15-15.00:
Madeleine Reeves, Manchester University
"Moskvachylyk: Spaces of Favour and Indifference in Moscow’s Temporary Housing Market"
2012
Autumn
Thursday, September 6th, 13.15-15.00:
Joost Fontein, University of Edinburgh
"Re-Making the Dead, Uncertainty and the Torque of Human Materials in Northern Zimbabwe"
Thursday, September 20th, 13.15-15.00:
Anh Nga Longva, University of Bergen
"Unspeakable 'I', Unspeakable 'you'. Pronoun Avoidance, Selfhood, and the Construction of the Vietnamese Social World"
Thursday, September 27th, 13.15-15.00:
Laura Rival, University of Oxford
"Encountering Nature through Fieldwork Experiments: Indigenous Knowledge, Local Creativity and Modes of Reasoning"
Thursday, October 4th, 13.15-15.00:
Halvard Vike, University of Oslo
"Egalitarianism, Autonomy, Market and State"
Thursday, October 18th, 13.15-15.00:
Giovanni da Col, University of Oxford
"The Way of the Begu: Bullshitting and the Opacity of Interiority in Tibetan Borderlands"
Thursday, October 25th, 13.15-15.00:
Victor de Munck, SUNY New Paltz
"A Selective Survey of Theories of Culture: The Collective-Individual; Particulate-Distributive Conundrums"
Thursday, December 6th, 13.15-15.00:
Soumhya Venkatesan, University of Manchester
"Material Affordances: Challenging through 'Back and Forth Ethnography"
Thursday, December 13th, 13.15-15.00:
Nicholas de Genova , Goldsmiths, University of London
"This New Religion of Whiteness": Some Reflections on Nationalism, Postcoloniality, and the European Question
Spring
Thursday, January 12th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Astrid B. Stensrud, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
"Perspectives on Animism, Personhood and Violence in the Andes"
Thursday, January 19th, 13.15-15.00:
Assoc. Prof. Henrik Vigh, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
"On Conflict, Potentiality and Social Invisibility"
Thursday, February 16th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Jason Sumich, Department of Anthropology at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
"The Uncertainty of Nationalism: Alienation, the Middle Class and Narrative in Maputo"
Thursday, March 15th, 12.15-1400 (NB! An hour earlier than usual!):
Prof. Christina Garsten, Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University
"Think Tanks and the Art of Bricolage in Global Governance"
Thursday, March 22nd, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Knut Graw, Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
"Divination in Times of Migration: Globalization, Subjectivity, and the Path of Travel in Senegal and Gambia"
Thursday, April 19th, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Paige West, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
"Accumulation by Dispossession and the Elusive Concept of 'Capacity Building' in Papua New Guinea"
Thursday, April 26th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Nasser Abufarha, University of Wisconsin- Madison and Director of Palestine Fair Trade Association
"Dying to Live. On Suicide Bombing in Palestine"
Thursday, May 3rd, 13.15-15.00:
Assoc. Prof. Morten A. Pedersen, Department Anthropology, University of Copenhagen
"Detaching the Spirits in Mongolia: A Post-Relational Analysis"
Thursday, May 10th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Michael W. Scott, the London School of Economics and Political Science
"The Wonder of Being Makiran: A Legacy of Maasina Rule in Solomon Islands"
Thursday, May 31st, 13.15-15.00:
Giovanni da Col, Mongolia and Inner Asian Studies Unit, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
"The Opacity of Interiority and Other Technologies of the Sense: Humour and Baloney in Yunnan’s Shangri-la"
2011
Autumn
Thursday, August 25th 13.15-15.00:
Professor Andrew Strathern and Dr. Pamela Stewart, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh
"Aesthetics and Dynamics of Violence and Peace: Beyond the Triangle"
Thursday, September 8th 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Nicolas Argenti, Department of Anthropology, Brunel University
"Things of the Ground: Children’s Medicine, Motherhood and Memory in the Cameroon Grass Fields"
Thursday, September 22nd 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Maja Povrzanović Frykman, Global Political Studies, Malmö University
"Cosmopolitanism in Situ: Daily Urban Sociabilities in Malmö"
Thursday, October 6th 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Thomas Solomon, Griegakademiet, University of Bergen
"The Girl’s Voice in Turkish Rap. Vocality and the Patriarchal Bargain in the Life and Music of Ayben"
Tuesday, November 1st 13.15-15.00 NB! Please note day of the week!:
Dr. Moslih Kanaaneh, Anthropology Department, Indiana University
"Sociocide as a Replacement for the Old-fashioned Genocide (The case of Palestine)"
Friday, November 11th 13.15-15.00:
André Iteanu, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.), Paris
"Disappearing World"
Thursday, November 17th 13.15-15.00:
Professor Rane Willerslev, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo:
"'The New as Always the Same': Yukaghir Hunting Adaptations to Climate Change"
Thursday, November 24th 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Martin Holbraad, University College London
"Can the Thing Speak? Anthropology and Pragatology"
Thursday, December 1st 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Thomas Michael Walle, Norsk Folkemuseum
"Beyond Stigmatisation: Some Thoughts on how Ethnicity Obscures Gender, and why an Ethnography of Cricket is an Answer"
Spring
Thursday, February 3rd, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Dr. Frode Storås, Bergen Museum, University of Bergen
"Visual Anthropology, a Different Kind of Anthropology?" [Presentation of two of his recent ethnographic films, "Kissed and kissed again – the miraculous icon of Tinos, Greece" (2010) and "Friends" (2010)].
Thursday, February 3rd, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Ståle Knudsen, Department of social anthropology, University of Bergen
"How to Account for Patterns, Trends and Shifts? The Political Ecology of Biodiversity and the Management of Introduced Species"
Thursday, February 17th, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Susanne Kuechler, Department of Anthropology, University College London
"Bodies, Tubers and Artefacts. Figuration, Physiology and Empathy in Eastern Polynesia and Island Melanesia"
Thursday, February 24th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Brian Silverstein, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona
"The Discipline of Others: Making Islam a Religion in Turkey"
Thursday, March 3rd, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Diane Nelson, Cultural Anthropology, Duke University
"Accounting For and Counting On: Pyramids, General Equivalents, and the End’s of War in Guatemala"
Thursday, March 17th 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Dennis Rogers, Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester
"Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with their Moms? Contrasting Views from Chicago and Managua"
Thursday, March 31st, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Edvard Hviding, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen
"'But the Words Remain': Revelations of Knowledge and the Politics of Loss in Solomon Islands"
Tuesday, April 5th, 13.15-15.00 Please note day!
Dr. Gracia Clark, Anthropology Department, Indiana University
"Representing Everyday Islam in a West African City on the Web"
Thursday, April 7th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Charles Hirschkind, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
"Is There a Secular Body?"
Thursday, April 14th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Rune Flikke, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo
"Natural Possession? Wind, Weather, and Occult Experiences among Zulu Zionists"
Wednesday, April 27th, 13.15-15.00 Please note day!
Prof. Caroline Humphrey, Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Kings College, London
"The Political Logic of Buryat National Outrage"
Thursday, May 5th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. John Schoeberlein, Davis Center, Harvard University
"The Meanings of Re-Islamization in Post-Soviet Central Asia"
Thursday, May 12th, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Philippe Peycam, International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Netherlands
"Sketching an Institutional History of Academic Knowledge Production in Cambodia (1863-today)"
Thursday, May 26th, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Steven Feld, Professor of Anthropology & Music at University of New Mexico and Prof. II at Department of Musicology, University of Oslo
"Jazz Cosomopolitanism in Accra"
Thursday, June 9th, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. James Leach, Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen
"The Death of the Slit-Gong. Abstraction/Connection on the Rai Coast"
2010
Autumn
Friday, September 10, 13.15-15.00 Note date!:
Dr. Knut Nustad, NUPI & Norwegian University of Life Sciences
"Performing natures and land in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa"
Thursday, September 23, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Graeme Were, University College London
"From Surfaces to Affordances: Materials and Knowledge in a Pacific Society"
Thursday, October 7, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Toon Van Meijl, Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies at University of Nijmegen
"Doing Indigenous Epistemology: Internal Debates about Inside Knowledge in Maori Society"
Thursday, October 14, Canceled
Dr. Richard Rottenburg, Marthin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg:
"Is Experimentalization a New Figuration of Politics and Science in African Contexts?"
Thursday, October 21, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Lamont Lindstrom, University of Tulsa
"Settling and Unsettling Disputes: A View from the Village"
Thursday, October 28, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Alla Sokolova, Center for Jewish Studies at European University in St. Petersburg
"The Former Jewish ‘Shetls’ in Ukraine; A Study in Architectural Anthropology"
Thursday, November 4, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Ingjerd Hoëm, University of Oslo
"Languages of Governance in Conflict: A Case from Tokelau"
Thursday, November 11, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Christine Jacobsen, IMER/University of Bergen
"Islamic Traditions and Muslim Youth in Norway"
Tuesday, November 23, 13.15-15. Note the day!
Dr. Bettina Ng'weno, University of California Davis
Title to be announced
Thursday, December 2, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Vassos Argyrou, Reader in Social Anthropology, University of Hull
"The Rehabilitation of Nature in European Culture: A New Eurocentrism?"
Spring
Thursday, 21 January, 14.15-16.00 (NOTE THE TIME!):
Dr. Debra McDougall, University of Western Australia
"'We are one in the spirit of God'? Religion, public culture, and village politics in Solomon Islands"
Thursday, 28 January, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Frode Storås, University of Bergen:
"If the Vagina had Teeth. Chassuka, Mosambique"
Seminar on a film by Liivo Niglas and Frode Storaas
Thursday, 4 February, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Bruce Kapferer, University of Bergen
"Louis Dumont and a Holist Anthropology"
Thursday, 11 February, 13.15-15:
Dr. Kjetil Fosshagen, University of Bergen:
"Towards an Understanding of Islamic Sacrifice in Turkey: Ritual, Secularism and a Transforming State"
Thursday, 18 February, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Knut Chr. Myhre, The Nordic African Institute, Uppsala
"How to Butcher an Animal: Reflections on Normativity and Relationality among the Chagga of Kilimanjaro"
Thursday, 25 February, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, University of Bergen
‘Ambiguous spaces for citizenship: Indigenous socialities and state policies in processes of urbanization, Peru.’
Thursday, 4 March, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Anette Fagertun, University of Bergen
"Localizing Global Dynamics through Labour: Class as a New Regime of Value in Bali, Indonesia"
Friday, March 12, 13.15-15.00 (NOTE THE DAY!):
Prof. Don Kalb, Central European University, Budapest, and Utrecht University
"The Return of the Repressed: On Class and Neonationalism in Contemporary Europe"
Thursday, 18 March, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Hogne Øian, Norsk Institutt for Naturforskning (NINA), Lillehammer
"Å drepe fisk, eller ikke drepe...? Kontroverser rundt regulering av fiske og fangst i noen vassdrag på indre Østlandet"
Thursday, 25 March, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Ann-Kristin Ekman, Institutionen för stad och land, Uppsala
"Social komplexitet och førandring: Om betydelsen av interna och externa relationer för utvecklingen i en utkantsby över tid"
Thursday, 22 April, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. J. Terrence McCabe, University of Colorado, Boulder
"Risk, Intensification, Change, and Complexity: Competing Flows of Ideas and Capital in Northern Tanzania"
Thurday, 6 May, 13.15-15.00:
Research fellow Hanna Skartveit, University of Bergen
"'You Don’t Put on Weight on Shabbat': Notions of Food and Health in the Buenos Aires Kabbalah Centre"
Thursday, 3 June, 13.15-15.00
Dr. Marion Berghahn, Berghahn Books:
"Scholarly Publishing in Troubled Times"
2009
Autumn
Tuesday, Aug. 25, 13.15-15.00 (Note the day!):
Dr. Rebecca Bryant, George Mason University
"History’s Remainders: On Cyprus’ Incomplete Pasts"
Wednesday, Sept. 2, 13.15-15.00 (Note the day!):
Dr. Daromir Rudnyckyj, University of Victoria
"Practicing Globalization: Islam and the Afterlife of Development in Indonesia"
Thursday, Sept. 3, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Veronica Strang, University of Auckland
"Mapping Histories: Cultural Landscapes and Walkabout Methods"
Thursday, Sept. 10, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Jon Mitchell, University of Sussex
"Performing Statues: Material Culture and Popular Catholicism"
Thursday, Sept. 17, 13.15-15.00:
Eria Olowo Onyango, Department of Social Anthropology, UiB
"Chasing the Shadows of State: Cattle Raiding, Violence and Disarmament in North-Eastern Uganda"
Thursday, Sept. 24, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Don Handelman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
"Self-Exploders, Self-Sacrifice, and the Rhizomic Organization of Terrorism"
Thursday, Oct. 1, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Tone Bringa, Department of Social Anthropology, UiB
"Celebration and Mourning: The Ritual Landscape of Bosnia's Muslims"
Thursday, Oct. 8, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Christina Garsten, University of Stockholm
"The Play of Veils: Transparency, Trust and Delusion on the Global Market"
Thursday, Oct. 15, 13.15-15.00:
Tom Mountjoy, Department of Social Anthropology, UiB
"Anthropology and Sport in Modern Melanesia: The individual and Collective Experience of Soccer in the Solomon Islands"
Thursday, Oct. 22, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Dag Jørund Lønning, Nordland Research Institute
"Frå frukta til frøet! Antropologiske/prosessfilosofiske perspektiv på ny- og fellesskaping i småsamfunn"
Thursday, Oct. 29, 13.15-15.00:
Dr. Lars Nyre, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, UiB
"Ei kjensle av verkelegheit. Det akustiske rommet i norsk radio"
Thursday, Nov. 5, 13.15-15.00:
Prof. Bruce Kapferer, Department of Social Anthropology, UiB
"Cinema and Ritual: New Perspectives through Kubrick's 2001"
The night before: Showing of the film ‘2001’ in the Department. Drinks and food will be provided.
Spring
Thursday 7. May, 12.15-18.00
Mini-conference: “Witchcraft, Magic and the Phantasmagoric Realities of Modernity”
12.15 - 12.45 Introduction by Prof. Bruce Kapferer (University of Bergen)
12.45 - 13.45 Prof. Peter Geschiere (University of Amsterdam)
Witchcraft and the Law - Issues of Evidence and Reality, Discourse and Agency
14.00 - 14.45 Ass. Prof. Nils Bubandt (Aarhus University)
Witchcraft is Always the Problem; Never the Answer: Witchcraft, Aporia, and Modernity in eastern Indonesia
14.45 - 15.30 Prof. Koen Stroeken (Research Foundation Flanders/ KU Leuven)
How Magic Initiation Prevents Witch Killing: A Sukuma (Tanzania) Case
15.45 - 16.30 Ass. Prof. Andrew Lattas (University of Bergen)
Sorcery, Capitalism and the State: Re-assembling Modernity in Rural Papua New Guinea
16.30 - 17.15 Ass. Prof. Knut Rio (University of Bergen)
Witchcraft, Media and State: New Phantasmagoric Spaces in Melanesia.
Thursday 14. May, 13.15-15.00
Prof. Sharon E. Hutchinson (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
"Perilous Outcomes: International Monitoring and the Perpetuation of Violence in Sudan"
Monday 18 May, 13.15-15.00
Ass. Prof. Stephanie C. Kane (Indiana University')
"Science, the Sofitel, and the Diminishment of Nature: The Dark Eyes of Water in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil"
Thursday 28. May, 13-15
Prof. Harri Englund (University of Cambridge)
[Title will be announced]
BSAS
The department seminar, known as Bergen Social Anthropology Seminars (BSAS), is the main forum for dialogue and debate about anthropological research and theoretical development at the Department in Bergen.