Per Brandström: Book review of Mhola - The Utopia of Peace

Adelaida Caballero recently defended her dissertation successfully at the department. Now you can hear her talk about her research about female sexuality and cultural anthropology as a discipline in the Swedish podcast Ett hum om. 

Last week, the Swedish Anthropology Association SANT's annual conference is being organized at the Ethnographic Museum in Stockholm, together with Stockholm University. The conference theme this year was Care and the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University was represented in many panels and roundtables.

In 2023, Forum for Africa Studies received funding from the Vice-Chancellor for a broad university-wide mandate, including all university faculties. The full-day launching event started with Vice-Chancellor Professor Anders Hagfeldt officially inaugurating Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies.

April 18th, Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies hosts a seminar with Professor Ludovic O. Kibora, Director of Institut des Sciences Sociétés in Burkina Faso, and Professor Sten Hagberg. They will talk about the English edition of their new book Security from below in Burkina Faso Citizen perceptions and perspectives 2023.

On April 11, we officially open the FAKTURAART exhibition. When you visit, you will find some 85 pieces displayed, and you can pick a personal and very exclusive copy of the beautiful exhibition folder. The show will run to June 16. Open weekdays 10 am to 3 pm.

Today, Adelaida Caballero handed over her doctoral thesis in cultural anthropology Shortchanged: Elderly Women Street Vendors in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea to Carolina Rediviva and then walked in the winter sun to the University Hall where she got to nail her thesis

Adelaida’s public Ph.D. defense will take place on April 21 at 13.00, at the Geijer Hall, Campus English Park, Uppsala University. Click on the News to read more and for information in Spanish. 

Professor of Cultural Anthropology and director of the Forum for Africa Studies, Sten Hagberg, is interviewed in the Swedish Research Council's magazine Curie about the future and challenges of development research.

Syrian-Swedish artist Khaled Ahmad exhibits his project Fakturaart at the department, in collaboration with the Engaging Vulnerability research program. 

In the Swedish Anthropological Association's online magazine Antroperspektiv, you can now read a new column on the importance of ethnographic methods in medical research, a theme that is both researched and taught here at the department.

My research turns towards the future as I research youth in Ghana and beyond, student migration, integration, knowledge societies, social media in the classroom, social media in African elections, uses of augmented reality, and recent publications have been on the important issue of decolonizing the academy. At the department, I teach African studies, spring 2023 two courses: A2 Africa in the 2000s and A3 African Cultural Expressions.

The application period is open for the departments summer course Ethnographic Methods in a Digitized World. The course in in Swedish and you find more inforamtion about it if you switch the webpage language into Swedish. 

A new text by Sverker Finnström is published today in the Swedish web magazine Antroperspektiv. Sverker writes about going on a kind of book-hunting field trip, the importance of taking the time to read older books of the discipline, and the unexpected stories and parallels that can emerge from a pile of books.

Mats Utas, Head of the Department, was interviewed in the magazine Universitetsläraren, after the department received an injunction from the Swedish Work Environment Authority due to shortcomings in work environment management. Mats expresses frustration that representatives from this agency only are interested in ensuring a processing structure, while they completely ignore all the actual work that the department has done.

February 16th is World Anthropology Day. The Swedish Anthropological Society (SANT) is launching its new website on the day. SANT's web magazine, Antroperspektiv, also has a new layout and new editors, Haris Agic and Uppsala-affiliated Katarina Graffman.

Today, Sten Hagberg, Professor in Cultural Anthropology and Director for the Forum for Africa Studies, writes about the Swedish research aid together with Sara Gräslund, Linley Chiwona Karltun and Gunnar Köhlin. The government has cut more than half of this year's budget. Now a quick recovery is needed.

Birgitta Meurling, Professor of Ethnology, is celebrating her 60th birthday with colleagues and friends at the department with sparkling wine and snacks on Monday afternoon. We wish Birgitta a very happy birthday!

Today, February 3rd, we congratualte Rikard Engblom for successfully defending his PhD thesis in Ethnology, called Time Warps: Refugees and the Experience of Waiting in Rural Sweden.

We warmly welcome our new PhD candidate Marcelo Pacheco to the department! Marcelos research will be on migration from the Bolovian Highlands to La Paz, and focus on psychosocial dynamics connected to climate change. 

This Friday, Jan. 13th,  PhD candidate in ethnology Rikard Engblom “nailed” his PhD thesis Time Warps – Refugees and the Experience of Waiting in Rural Sweden. The dissertation is thereby officially announced and handed over to the university library.

The public PhD defense will take place on February 3, in Geijersalen (room 6-1023), campus Engelska Parken, and begins at 9:15 a.m.

The second selection for the spring semester 2023 was completed on December 20. Remember that you who have been admitted need to accept course places to keep them. In order to then be able to start your studies you also need to register for the courses you want to take.

The Anthropologist Katarina Graffman is affailiated research at the department and is often highlighted in media for her research about consumer habits. After the New Year holiday, she has been interviewed in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, as well as in the public service radiostation P1, about how our consumption behaviors change in economic ressecion. 

Part two in the Swedish podcast Staden is released, with anthropologist Carl Rommel focusing on Cairo.

The Staff Portal hihglights the department's ethnologist Gösta Arvastson and his book about Meteorology. 

Carl Rommel in collaboration with the podcast Staden about Cairo's land, economy and housing.

We congratulate Annika Björnsdotter Teppo who has been hired as professor in cultural anthropology.

The programme Citizen Perspectives on Societal Challenges in Mali ((French: Perspectives citoyennes des défis de société au Mali) is a five year project funded by the Embassy of Sweden in Bamako on behalf of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), 2022-2026. Its main objective is to promote citizen perspectives through the implementation of engaged research, the organization of citizen debates and the capacity building of young researchers. Particular attention will be paid to the promotion of women leaders as researchers, teachers and opinion leaders. The programme is led by the Forum for Africa Studies at Uppsala University, and will be implemented in collaboration with Swedish and Malian partners.

Mats Utas is interviewed on Sveriges Radio. It is a program about the Italian mafia and the murder of the prosecutor Borsellino, known 30 years ago. About 2.40 and 3.50 minutes into the program you can hear Mats talk about gang culture connected to the structures of society.

Our former master student Alex Maxia now writes for The Times. In this article he is doing a cultural analysis on the Swedish Netflix series Love and Anarchy.

Claudia Merli joins the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study as one of the Fellows in residence during the academic year 2022-2023. During her time at the collegium she will be writing on political space and the body in Thailand'

The department's ethnologist Gurbet Peker is a doctoral student at the graduate school in sustainable development on Campus Gotland. She researches the everyday life of sheep farmers in the Gotland countryside.

Svenskt projektforum has nominated and awarded the prize to Project Manager's Book of the Year 2022. The jury assesses how current the books are, how easy they are to absorb and if they add something new. Susann Baez Ullbergs et al. book was one of the nominees.

Our longtime employee Per Brandström, now retired, has been reviewed in the Journal of Anthropological research. The review is about his book Mhola - The Utopia of Peace: An Ethnographic Exploration of the Sungusungu Movement in Tanzania, which was published last year in our series Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

Our anthropologist and affiliated researchers have been interviewed on Brazilian TV about Swedish NATO membership, Turkey and Swedish-Kurdish relations.

Bachelor essay writer Emma Fritze was invited to participate in a conference for this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Turin, Italy and decided to report on her experiences from this year's competition.

Gösta Arvastson har gett ut boken Molnspanare - en meteorologisk historia. Boken handlar om det vetenskapliga arbetet som ledde fram till att molnen fick sina latinska namn och ger ett viktigt bidrag till Uppsala universitets historia ur en etnologs synvinkel.

Mats Utas was invited speaker as the Department of media and social sciences at the University of Stavanger celebrated its 50 years anniversary. He gave a talk about ethnography and journalism in times of war.

Vår antropolog Katarina Graffman har tillsammans med Haris Agic skrivit om kulturchauvinism i en essä i magasinet Opulens.

Listen to a conversation between Uppsala University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Anders Hagfeldt and Forum for Africa Studies’ Director, Professor Sten Hagberg. The conversation in swedish is about research in different African countries and how Forum for Africa Studies works to strengthen research collaboration with African universities and research institutes.

A new project will highlight a completely unwritten story about women behind the camera. Carina Johansson with others have opened the door to the photo magazine to write about this new field. The project is called The women behind the camera on Gotland 1860-2021.

There is enough water on Earth. Just not everywhere – and for everyone. Now researchers at Uppsala University and the Uppsala University Sustainability Initiatives (UUSI) network want to spotlight injustices surrounding the world’s water. And how we in Sweden need to approach this matter. Susann Baez Ullberg is a part of the network UUSI.