Former PhD and postdoc projects on Asia

Name, affiliation, e-mail

Research interests

Bennike, Rune Bolding
Postdoc

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Political Landscapes: Place, History, and Belonging in the Nepal-India Borderland
The connection between landscapes and politics in the borderland of the Indian district of Darjeeling and eastern districts of Nepal.

Caple, Jane Eluned
Postdoc

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

My main research interests are in the field of religion, economy and morality. My particular focus thus far has been on the revival and development of Tibetan monastic Buddhism in post-Mao China, lay-monastic relations and different forms of modes of religious giving. My research reflects my interdisciplinary area studies background, crossing boundaries between anthropology, religious studies and history, as well as between Chinese and Tibetan studies.

Dragsdahl, Rune Christoffer Bech
PhD fellow
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Indian Pulses in Africa: An ethnographic exploration of the role of Indian investors and entrepreneurs in agricultural exports from Mozambique and Ethiopia to India
An explorative project 'following the pulses' in and of the increasing trade between India and Africa. Part of the project Emerging Worlds: ethnographic explorations of new south-south connections.

Friis Larnæs, Jesper
PhD fellow

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Rethinking Sanskrit Grammar - The Genesis of the Paninian Recasts
The theoretical and methodological principles upon which the representation of sanskrit in a series of grammatical descriptions is based.

Gill, Bani
PhD fellow

South-South Mobilities: An ethnographic exploration of African migrants in contemporary Delhi

Harmsen, Peter Roy
PhD fellow

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

My PhD project concerns the biography of Danish entrepreneur Laurits Andersen (1849-1928), a pioneer among foreign businessmen in the Tianjin and Shanhai areas around the turn of the 20th century. In addition, my primary research interests are the following:

The Second Sino-Japanese war (1931-1945)
Republican China
Biography as literary genre
Collective biography
Social network analysis

Hedegaard, Marianne Viftrup 

Hirslund, Dan Vesalainen
Postdoc

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

• 21st century Maoism in South Asia and its transformations from a rural to an urban movement in Nepal
• social power of monetary debts among precariat laborers in Kathmandu

Ishihara, Yuko
PhD fellow

Department of Media, Cognition and Communication

Center for Subjectivity Research

'Topos' and 'transcendental' in Heidegger and Nishida

Japanese philosophy, phenomenology, transcendental philosophy, neo-Kantian philosophy

Janeja, Manpreet Kaur
Assistant professor
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Anthropology of food and hospitality, obesity, trust, place, migration, law, 'multiculturalism', popular Hinduism and Islam in South Asia (India, Bangladesh) and Europe (United Kingdom) 

Kristensen, Benedikte Møller
PhD fellow

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Returning to the Forest: Shamanism, History and Landscape among the Duha of Northern Mongolia

The PhD thesis investigates spirits and spiritual powers among the Duha in Mongolia. It is based on long-term fieldworks among the Duha reindeer-nomads in Mongolia and examines how the Duha employ shamanism, in particular shamanic artefacts and natural entities, to sense, control and challenge their own history, being and lives in local and national landscapes.

(Defended in June 2015)

Larnæs, Jesper Friis
Phd fellow

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Laursen, Ole Birk
Postdoc

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Anarchism in the British Empire: Anti-Colonialism, Anarchism and the Question of National Liberation in Britain, 1905-1962

The project is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. It explores the ways in which anarchism challenged Britain's colonial project and influenced anti-colonial resistance movements in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.

Lehmann-Jacobsen, Emilie Tinne
Research assistant

Department of Media, Cognition and Communication

Liu, Jun
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication

Media and Communications in Transition Societies
Digital media, Political communication, Political sociology, Social theory, Contentious politics, Social movement, Chinese politics, Quantitative and qualitative methodologies

Mirsultan, Aysima 
Postdoctoral fellow

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Olma, Nikolaos
PhD fellow
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Parpiani, Maansi 
PhD fellow

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

- Intersections of caste, gender and religious identities in contemporary   India

- Spaces of rural-urban interactions and in the movement of people

- Everyday life of women from the ex-untouchable (Dalit - Mahar) community in contemporary times

Puri, Stine Simonsen
Postdoc

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Monsoonal Escalations in India and Beyond

This project will explore escalations at the interface between agriculture, climate and finance in relation to the monsoon in North India. It examines how accelerating climate change, along with global developments in products for speculation in weather risks, affect Indian farmers.

Roszko, Edyta
Postdoc

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Steenberg, Rune 
Postdoctoral fellow

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Reclaiming the oasis. The localization of customs in Xinjiang (1985‒2015)

Trolle, Astrid Krabbe
PhD fellow

Dept. of Cross-Cultural & Regional Studies

Filipinos in Denmark and their transnational religious networks
Migration, Philippines

Ulfstjerne, Michael Alexander
PhD fellow
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Un-Real Estate: The Social Life of Temporary Wealth in China

The project investigates the social and political effects of radical urban planning in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR). Addressing the problem of under-population combined with a debt-financed cityscape the project will trace local imaginaries of growth as they are produced, enacted, and altered through the city’s rapid boom to bust cycle.
(Defended in January 2015)

Zabiliute, Emilija
PhD fellow

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Everyday violence, medicalization and embodiment in a Delhi slum

Investigates medical lives in a slum in Delhi suburbs. It looks at body constructs in the everyday lives of the urban poor in New Delhi and social effects of medicalization (operated by the state and neoliberal economy) of those lives.

Zeitzen, Miriam Koktvedgaard
Postdoc

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Zeng, Fiona Huijie
PhD fellow

The project is part of The Peoples' Internet (PIN) project. PIN investigates how the cultural tradition, political regulation, and the Internet as a technology shape citizens’ communication. Under a comparative framework, the project looks at three centers of the global economy and world politics, respectively China, Europe, and the United States. 

Ørberg, Elizabeth Lane Williams
Postdoc

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Spiritual tourism and the branding of Buddhism in Ladakh, India
The project is part of the collaborative research project Buddhism, Business and Believers

Faculty of Social Sciences

Andersen, Signe Lindgård
PhD fellow

Department of Anthropology

Exports of health services to China

Through an ethnographic study of the Danish evidence-based concept of Fast Track Surgery (FTS) and how the concept travels, this PhD-project will examine the processes and social dynamics related to the transfer of the FTS concept in a global encounter between Danish and Chinese health care providers.

Blaxekjær, Lau
PhD fellow

Department of Political Science

Global climate politics and governance. Climate politics focusing on China, Japan, Korea, and EU. Bourdieu. New Institutionalism. Power. Rhetoric. Narrative. 

The PhD project will result in an article-based dissertation which will analyse and discuss different examples of global governance within the climate politics field.
(Defended in Nov 2015)

Breengaard, Michala Hvidt
PhD fellow

Department of Sociology

The ideals and practices of motherhood. Focuses on how motherhood is practised and experienced in two different cultures Denmark and China. 

Bregnbæk, Susanne
Postdoc

Department of Anthropology

An Exploration of the Religious Lives of Young Chinese Christians in Beijing

The rise of Christianity amongst young well educated urbanites in connection with state/society relationships in China. 

Dalgas, Karina Märcher
Postdoc

Department of Anthropology, Changing Disasters

Migrant interventions in Philippine disasters

This project examines the role of migrants in the recovery and reconstruction phase of Philippine disasters. While living outside the area of impact, migrants remain part of their societies of origin. Their swift and significant financial support therefore plays a crucial role in disaster recovery and reconstruction. The project examines the consequences of the migrants’ disaster interventions, how these interventions relate to recovery and relief efforts of larger institutional actors and what kind of social change that these interventions brings about within and beyond the disaster area. 

Dehlholm, Mikkel
PhD fellow

Dept. of Sociology

The Chinese welfare state
The thesis specifically addresses the question of how the regulation of the global economy and China's place in the international system of states influences welfare state development in China.

Ilkjær, Helene
PhD fellow

Department of Anthropology

Back to Serve? Return Migration among Indian IT professionals
PhD project investigates the transnational migration trajectories of a group of Indian knowledge professionals and IT entrepreneurs, focusing specifically on their experiences settling into everyday life in Bangalore upon their move back to India mid-career, after up to twenty years away and with children born abroad.
(Defended in Nov 2015)

Ilkjær, Helene
Industrial postdoctoral fellow

Department of Anthropology

Anthropological studies of disruptive technology deployment in Airports

Kristensen, Peter Marcus
Postdoc

Department of Political Science

States of Emergence: A Genealogy of Emerging Powers in World Politics

Primary research interests: International Relations Theory, Sociology of Knowledge, Rising Powers and Power Transition Theory, Non-Western Perspectives on International Relations, China, India and Brazil

Lee, Jieun
Postdoc
Dept. of Anthropology

Living Well with Dementia in Aging Korea?:How Qualities of Life Matter in the Nation-wide Dementia Management Program in Korea

As part of a larger, collaborative project “The Vitality of Disease: Quality of Life in the Making”, this project investigates how “quality of life” as a concept, measurement tool, and/or everyday vernacular takes on different meanings and values, generates knowledges, and enables diverse practices to make “good life”.

Leeson, Christina Algreen-Petersen 
PhD fellow

Department of Anthropology

Caring robots. The role of advanced technology within professional healthcare. 
Main focus of this project is to explore how new forms of assistive robotic technologies make the transition out of the laboratory and enter the lives of elderly and disabled people. The project is based on fieldwork in Japan and in Denmark.

Li, Xuan
PhD fellow

youth policy, comparative studies, Denmark-China

Liu, Yu-Ting
PhD fellow

Department of Sociology

Comparative welfare state analysis, especially the comparison of the East Asian welfare states with various European welfare state types

Ma, Yi
PhD fellow

Department of Political Science

Matzen, Ida Sofie
PhD fellow
Department of Anthropology

Spirituality, Politics and Security in Pakistan: Sufi Imaginaries and Cosmological Modes of Securitization
explore practices and ideas of securitization within apparently apolitical groupings of followers of Sufi Islam in Lahore, Pakistan. I am interested in how processes of securitization - the process of deeming something or someone a threat against a group or an individual and the subsequent  practices - contribute to a specific "Sufi engagement" in society and politics of present Pakistan.

Mennes, Frauke Tom H.
PhD fellow

Department of Anthropology

The Scapegoat: Productions of Violence and Peace in Rural South India

Mulvad, Andreas Christian Møller
PhD fellow

Department of Political Science

Capitalism and democracy in China's Republican Century (1911-present)

The project deals with the two pivotal issues of regime legitimacy and social polarisation in China's emerging variety of capitalism. The methodological approach is that of historical sociology combined with political theory.

Parmalingam, Priya Dershini
PhD fellow

Law and Dept. of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

International dispute settlement, comparative politics (with a focus on Southeast Asia), relations between the State and business actors, foreign policy.

Pedersen, Thomas Randrup
PhD fellow

Department of Anthropology

What Doesn’t Kill You: An Anthropological Exploration of Denmark’s New Warrior Generation

The project scrutinises how Danish soldiers, through military training and war-zone deployment, are (trans)formed in part as professional practitioners and in part as human beings. The project is based on ethnographic fieldwork inside Danish combat units before, during and after deployment to Afghanistan.

Sejrup, Jens
Postdoc

Current research: How the collection, circulation, classification and museum exhibition of objects define Europe from the outside in during Europe’s present loss of global hegemony, especially in relation to Japan and in comparison with the early modern period of European ascendancy.

Steur, Luisa Johanna
Assistant professor

Department of Anthropology

Indigenist mobilization: "identity" versus "class" after the Kerala model of development"

India (esp. Kerala – also Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Utter Pradesh) and Cuba.

Political anthropology, caste and racial inequality, indigenous politics, social movements, class relations, poverty and development, capitalist transformation, Marxian and world systems theory.

Sørensen, Camilla T. N.
Assistant professor

Department of Political Science

What kind of world power will China be? Answers from the Chinese debate
The main Chinese discourses on the challenges and opportunities facing China as a world power and discussing the implications for developments in Chinese foreign and security policy

Tonami, Aki
Researcher

Nordic Institute of Asian Studies

Asia in a Changing Arctic
The objectives and ambitions of Asian states (in particular, China, Japan, India, ROK and Singapore) in the Arctic. This project investigates further the origins and creation of the Asian Arctic policies and attempts to provide knowledge of the economic, political and security impacts of the Asian states' engagement in the Arctic.

Development Strategies of Nordic and Asian Countries – understanding cultural relations

Trifkovic, Neda
Postdoc

Department of Economics

The role of food standards in development: an empirical perspective

The thesis looks at (i) the impact of the emergence of food standards on farmers’ wellbeing, (ii) the effects of various forms of vertical coordination on household welfare and (iii) the consequences of the concurrent emergence of food standards and vertical coordination in the Vietnamese pangasius sector.

Umino, Ayumi
PhD fellow
Department of Psychology

Promoting metacognitive skills of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder in elementary school in Denmark and Japan

Zhang, Chenchen
Postdoc

Department of Political Science

Territory, Rights and Mobility: Theorising the Citizenship/Migration Nexus in the Context of Europeanisation

This dissertation examines the changing patterns of territorialising space, distributing rights and regulating mobility in the intertwined politics of citizenship and that of migration in the EU.