Primary fields of research

I have a broad interest in climate politics, nature and political activism in Latin America and Northern Europe. I have worked with the performative aspects of protests, time and political cosmology among climate activists,  anarchists and among indigenous peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon. With a background in the NGO world I also worked and conducted research on forest and climate, indigenous peoples' rights claims, agroindustry and extractive industries in the Amazon bassin. 

Current research

From 2014 to 2018, my research focused on ‘the political life of trees.’ The project addressed the political agency of trees and their role in politics and political activism concerning deforestation, biodiversity loss and climate change mitigation. The project investigated human interaction with trees in the Ecuadorian Amazon and among radical environmental activists in Germany and Scandinavia. It showed how trees are not just a passive backdrop for people's projects, but perceived as actants that are actively involved in creating change.

I continue these interests in the Velux-funded project Lokale Landvindinger (2021-2025), which examines the co-creation of the future of the landscape through stories about green transition of Danish agriculture, land distribution and how lowland soil (peatlands) are taken out of production.

From 2023, the project ‘Fire and Political Alterity in Amazonia' (funded by the Danish Research Council) will give continuity to my interest in notions of wild nature and radical environmental change. The project focuses on the political effects of forest fires through fieldwork in Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, addressing questions of the expansion of industrial agriculture, trade-related deforestation and climate policy. In other words, the project examines one climate system 'tipping point' in the unfolding, fire and the social and political changes it creates. https://anthropology.ku.dk/research/research-projects/current-projects/fire-and-political-alterity-in-amazonia/

I am appointed member of the expert council on Nature National Parks under the Ministry of Environment and of the coordination of the Green Solution Centre at University of Copenhagen. I teach courses on climate, nature and the environment, global flows, project design and fieldwork methods.