This text has been translated from Norwegian with the assistance of GPT UiO.
– What is occupying you right now?
– Work-wise, I’m in the final stages of completing a special issue on sovereignty (which is more than a year overdue), and I’m teaching two of my favourite courses, History of Anthropology and Anthropology in Practice.
– I’m also itching to get hold of a physical copy of my monograph, Following the Path of the Martyrs: Death and Revolution in the Kurdish Freedom Movement, which will hopefully be published around the summer.
– But more than anything, I’m occupied with my one-year-old, who is mostly occupied with tasting as many different things as possible.
– If you had to explain to an eight-year-old what you do at work, in three short sentences, what would you say?
– I teach people how to do research on humans. Both on people you don’t intuitively understand very well, and on people you think you understand, but maybe don’t after all. And I do that by encouraging people to spend time with the ones they are going to study.
– What motivates you in your job?
– I’m motivated by engaged students in my teaching. I find it incredibly fun to feel that I’ve taught someone something and (sometimes) expanded their sense of what exists or what might be possible.
– In terms of research, I’m motivated by the feeling that anthropological perspectives, in one way or another, really matter for the present and the future. The fact that this is something we can talk about and build a sense of community around at the department gives me a lot of drive to continue the work.
– If you were to do something completely different, what might it be?
– Then I’d like to do something that would let me read more and learn more languages – perhaps be a philologist or a historian of religion. (But with an anthropological twist.)
– What do you do to switch off?
– I lie in bed and scroll through Finn for about 10 minutes before my lack of sleep catches up with me. Housing in Oslo is very expensive.