Selected collective research projects with a focus on Asia

An increasing number of exciting collective projects relating to Asia are unfolding at the University of Copenhagen. Visit the project websites below and learn more about ongoing Asia research at the Humanities and Social Sciences.  

The Faculty of Humanities

Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Buddhism, Business and Believers
Trine Brox, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

Moral Economies of Food in Contemporary China: An Ethnographic Investigation of Relational Ethics through Foodstuffs
Mikkel Bunkenborg, Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
Danish Research Council for Independent Research Ɩ Humanities (FKK), 2016-20

The Afterlives of Urban Muslim Asia: Alternative Imaginaries of Society and Polity
The project is funded by the Art and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK
Dr. Vera Skvirskaja, Co-PI, 2022-2024, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

WASTE: Consumption and Buddhism in the age of garbage
The collaborative international research project WASTE draws attention to the global waste crisis by investigating the waste output attendant to Buddhism, a religion that is often portrayed as anti-materialist.
Associate professor Dr. Trine Brox, Funding: the Velux Foundations
Project period: September 2021 - September 2025

Department of Communication

Ruling through Division: Categorizing People and Resources in Contemporary China
 Jun Liu, Co-PI, Research Network, 2021-2024
Independent Research Fund Denmark

To Use or Not to Use? A Relational Approach to Information and Communication Technologies as Repertoire of Contention
Jun Liu, PI, Research Leaders 2021, Sapere Aude 
Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2022-2025

The Faculty of Social Sciences

Department of Anthropology

"After money, what is debt?": Indebted urban poor households in emerging cashless economies
Atreyee Sen, Dept. of Anthropology
Independent Research Fund Denmark, 2018-2021
The project relies on ethnographic fieldwork among the urban poor in Denmark/Romania, Brazil and India. Field methods in all sites will also include studying state-led cashlessness through interviews with bank management, techdesigners and public officials (as expert interviewees) on offering formal credit to the urban poor.

Global Europe: Constituting Europe from the outside in through artefacts
Oscar Salemink, Dept. of Anthropology
Danish Research Council for Independent Research, Sapere Aude Advanced Grant, 2015-21
The project explores 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 four non-European BRICS countries (Brazil, China, India, South Africa), in comparison with the early modern period of European ascendancy.

Living Together with Chronic Disease: Informal Support for Diabetes Management in Vietnam
Tine Gammeltoft, Dept. of Anthropology
Minstry of Foreign Affairs, 2018-2022
The project aims to contribute to developing innovative models for active involvement of informal support persons in day-to-day disease management, while also enhancing Vietnamese and Danish research capacities in the NCD field and offering new knowledge on the connections between informal support and everyday diabetes care.

Sensing Old Age: Travelling Technologies and the configurations of ageing in Denmark and Korea
Line Hillersdal & Kristina Grünenberg, Dept. of Anthropology
2019-2024, The project is supported by the Nordea Foundation and part of the Center for Healthy Aging, UCPH

VITAL. The Vitality of Disease - Quality of Life in the Making
Ayo Wahlberg, Dept. of Anthropology
ERC Starting Grant, 2015-2021
More people than ever before are living with (especially chronic) diseases. As a consequence, sustained efforts to reduce morbidity and mortality rates have been joined by systematised efforts to improve the lives – the quality of life – of those living with disease in ways that are measurable and auditable. The VITAL project will empirically investigate and analyse the making of ‘quality of life’.

Economics Department

Myanmar – REALM – REintegration through Active Labour Market Reforms
The project is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, through Danida.
Project Coordinator: John Rand 

Myanmar - Towards Inclusive Development in Myanmar
This project owned by the Myanmar Central Statistical Organization (CSO) and funded by Danida is implemented with technical and organisational support from DERG under two contracts with UNU-WIDER.

Vietnam - Enhancing the Effectiveness of Vocational Education in Vietnam (EEVE)
The Project is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark after approval by The Consultative Research Committee for Development Research (FFU).
Project Coordinator: Finn Tarp

Vietnam - The Impact of Inequality on Growth, Human Development and Governance @EQUAL
Funded by Novo Nordisk Fonden
Project Coordinator: Finn Tarp