As an MA student in Visual Anthropology and a research assistant during the last year, I have been a part of the collaborative research project Musikalske Besøgsvenner that explores relations between intimate home concerts, participation, aging, vulnerability, accessibility and health.

My research interests, however, extend beyond these subjects. Therefore, I am thrilled to embark on a new journey as a 5+3 PhD student of ANTHUSIA’s joint PhD programme between Aarhus University and University of Oslo. My PhD project is titled Fueling Frictions: entangled human and environmental health transformations through charcoal’s modalities in Northern Uganda in which I seek to understand dynamics between charcoal, deforestation and non-communicable diseases associated with household air pollution. In this endeavor, I intend to follow different modes through which charcoal come into existence as a driver of deforestation, commodity, energy source for cooking purposes, and polluter through the manifold ways it acts or is acted upon endangering the health of specific human and nonhuman bodies. I explore how these connections are viewed by and matter to human and nonhuman beings living day to day with this energy system as I conduct fieldwork in Northern forests and urban household kitchens. Audiovisual devices will continue to “fuel” my methodology and analytical approach and may offer a way to make visible processes that are often less sensorily palpable in other energy systems.

I look much forward to continue my engagement at Moesgård’s study and research environments with this new chapter.

Contact: 

Amalie Bakkær Munk Andersen
Institut for Kultur og Samfund - Afdeling for Antropologi
Aarhus Universitet
Moesgård Allé 20
DK-8270 Højbjerg
amalie.bma@cas.au.dk