In my work, I am driven by an interest to understand how digital media and emerging technologies afford new configurations of space and personhood, adding new dimensions to local environments. My expertise sits at the intersection of digital media and emerging technologies, energy and infrastructure, migration/minority studies, gender, and visual and multimodal approaches. From theorising the smartphone as relational device and real virtuality, to its undergirding infrastructure and related energy/environment implications, and the various effects of this new digital (algorithmic) ecology for differently situated groups of people. I have two decades of research experience and ethnographic fieldwork in South Africa, Denmark, and shorter fieldtrips to West Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East.

I am a panel member of the European Research Council (Advanced Grant) 2023- and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond 2022- . Currently, I am the PI of two projects in South Africa and a project in Denmark: ‘CLAIMS to Energy Citizenship in South Africa’ (DFC,10 mio dkk). A partnership between the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen and the African Centre for Cities, UCT (CoPI Liza Cirolia) and City of Cape Town, (Environmental Strategy Unit and Energy Poverty Reduction, Sustainable Energy Markets); and the research project  ‘Digital everyday lives far from Silicon Valley: Technological Imaginaries and Energy Futures in a South African Township’ (IRFD Inge Lehmann, 2,9 mio. dkk). The latest joint international conference for these two projects was held in June 2024. I also coordinate the Afghan/Danish research- and film Collective ARTlife, a CPH:LAB Talent programme 2022-2023 presented last year at MIT, NYU, Emerson College, CHASE UK, and Fondazione Monte Verita (CUSO).

My research and teaching centres around a vision: Forwarding an interdisciplinary and public-facing anthropology, exploring what digital-material environments could and should be; and building a community of practice around crafting multimodal formats for generating and circulating knowledge. I am continually expanding the methodological and conceptual toolbox needed to understand the digital dimension of our lives and our environment(s) in overlap with the themes of gender, inequality, politics of representation, and environmentally and socially just futures. incl. award-winning film (Royal Anthropological Institute, Basil Wright Film Prize, EthnoFest: Athens ethnographic Film Festival, Nordic Panorama, DOX LAB etc), photo, web, and interactive, digital formats.

My research is published in 30+ peer-reviewed publications reaching beyond my own discipline, incl. the acclaimed monograph ‘Why Muslim women and smartphones: ‘Mirror Images’ (Routledge 2020); two co-edited books with internationally leading colleagues: ‘Energy Futures: Anthropocene Challenges, Emerging Technologies and Everyday Life’ (De Gruyter 2022);  ‘An Anthropology of Futures and Technologies’ (Routledge 2023); and 3 journal special issues, the latest on ‘Digital Sociality: New Configurations of Public and Private in the Nordics’ (AJEC, Vol. 34 Fall 2024, Berghahn).

I head the Ethnographic Exploratory (EE) and founded the Multimodal MediaLab at department of Anthropology: A community space with early career researchers, students, staff and guest for experimenting with ethnography in multiple formats and exchange with other disciplines and guests from various sectors. I teach the ‘Multimodal Anthropology: Audiovisual and Digital Experimentation’, Spring semester and coordinate the ‘Anthropological Perspectives’-course, and I supervise MA and Ph.D.-students within my fields of expertise.

I coordinate the official Multimodal Ethnography Network under the European Association for Social Anthropologists (EASA) since 2023 and was coordinator of the EASA Future Anthropologies Network 2016-2023. I also serve on the editorial boards of the journals Cultural Anthropology, Visual Anthropology and AnthroVISION, and coordinate the departmental researcher group Technē: Technologies and the Digital.

I have been visiting scholar at Emerging Technologies Research Lab, Monash University (2020), Digital Ethnography Research Lab, RMIT University (2018), Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley (2016) and visiting student researcher at African gender Institute, University of Cape Town (2006).

Office hours: Monday 11.15-13.15