Forskningsenheden for Almen Praksis (FEAP)

I am positioned at Department of Anthropology and Research Unit for General Practice. My research unfolds at the interface between medical anthropology and critical public health. I direct an anthropological research group at Research Centre for Cancer Diagnosis in Practice, headed by Peter Vedsted. We currently explore challenges related to social inequality in cancer, healthcare itinaries, the production of pre-risk-cancer patients and healthcare system-population interaction.

Our research interests are thematically related to contemporary orientations to cancer disease control, but deal with more general questions of interest to medical anthropology:

The unfolding and management of care practices within the confines of the Danish welfare state.  Our research projects for example explore the construction and management of diagnostic uncertainties, the establishment of ‘at risk’ patient groups or ‘delayers’, and we engage in analysing contemporary misfits between biomedical truth claims, lived experience and the governance of population-healthcare system interaction.

The value of sensorially oriented scholarship to medical anthropology. We engage in developing research and thinking that explores ongoing developments (and expansions!) in medical semiotics. Fx how symptom experiences configure in the intersection between physiology and culture and how contemporary orientations to cancer disease control directs the senses in the clinical setting, and provide new moral and interpretative grounds for making distinctions between the normal and the pathological.

Ongoing projects:

Rikke Sand Andersen: Accessing Danish General Practice: Exploring Healthcare Seeking Practices as they unfold within the entanglements of science and bureaucracy.

Post Doc, Sara Marie Hebsgaard Offersen: Directing Life and Death in the Ordinary. Exploring Contemporary Cancer Mythologies in the Rural Danish Middleclass.

PhD-Fellow, Rikke Aarhus: Cancer Temporalities. Exploring the Introduction of Fast Track Cancer Pathways and their Implications for Patient and Healthcare Provider Identities.

Research Assistant, Michal Frumer: Producing At-Risk-Cancer-Patients. Exploring Prioritization and Patient Expectations.

Post Doc, Benedicte Møller Kristensen: 'Gut-feeling' and cancer suspicion in general practice with Sue Ziebland and Brian Nicholson, Oxford University

Rikke Sand Andersen: supervising SenCancer projects at UiT arctic university of Norway headed by Mette Bech Risør.