Research

My research intersects child, school, and ethnicity studies, focusing particularly on the relationship between 1) children and youths' self-perceptions, communities, practices, and experiences; 2) the institutional logics and practices of schools; and 3) the broader society's cultural norms, conflicts, and civilizing projects. I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork in several schools in Denmark, among children in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa.

More specifically, my research covers:

- Identity, ethnicity, gender, and religion in schools

- Children's identity perceptions, school strategies, and social communities in - schools

- Troublemaking and countercultural communities

- The school as a civilizing institution: education, integration, and the welfare state

- Islam, children, and the Danish school: The construction of Muslim identity, appropriate religiosity, and 'secularities-in-practice'

- Experiences of discrimination among minority Danish boys

- Second-generation minority parents and their children: school strategies and migration from a generational perspective

- Social patterns in school experiences and educational choices among minority and majority Danish youths in vocational education and high schools

Profile

I am an Associate Professor, Ph.D. in Educational Anthropology, and a trained anthropologist from the University of Copenhagen, with minor subjects of sociology and psychology from Oxford Brookes University, England.