I am a Ph.D. student at Copenhagen Centre for Health Research in the Humanities (CoRe) and the Faculty of Health and Medical Science (Department of Odontology). My primary research area is medical humanities and the cross-disciplinarity between health and culture.

My Ph.D. is part of the research and co-creation project named Lifelong Oral Health. The overall aim of the project is to gain knowledge on widespread oral health issues among citizens in the Danish eldercare, and to develop the most relevant initiatives to improve it through a co-creation process with the Copenhagen Centre for Health Research in the Humanities (CoRe), Department of Odontology and two Danish municipalities (Greve and Frederiksberg) and their care units (home care and nursing homes). In my qualitative and ethnographic part of the project, I focus on how oral health relates to quality of life, especially when it comes to shame, stigma, social inequality as well as illness, and ageing perceptions.

Recently I began to investigate oral health as a biocultural phenomenon within the theoretical framework of medical humanities. I want to understand how (oral) health crosses boundaries between health care, care units, everyday life, and cultural, social, and economic divisions - and also crosses the boundaries between medical science, social science, and the humanities. In my fieldwork it becomes clear that oral health problems are not just a matter of biomedical or odontological conditions – it is just as much, or maybe even more, a matter of cultural practices, habits, everyday life, work procedures in the care units, life stories, living conditions, financial circumstances, and welfare history. I’m therefore very interested in cross-disciplinarity between health and culture.

Primary research areas:

• Medical Humanities
• Co-creation (between research and praxis)
• Qualitative and ethnographic methods
• Social inequality in health
• Shame, stigma, and stigma power
• Disability Studies
• Care and care work
• Mental Health
• Quality of Life
• Ageing
• Life story