GRIP People

Affiliates

 

Ablo, Austin Dziwornu

Austin Dziwornu Ablo is a development geographer and a senior lecturer at the Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana. His research areas are urban studies and natural resource governance. Austin teaches and supervises both graduate and undergraduate students.

Akpan, Nseabasi

Nseabasi Akpan is a freelance photographer based in Ibadan, Nigeria. His photography focuses on storytelling and on documenting the present for the future, as well as aims to educate, entertain and empower and bring awareness to issues that can elevate public understanding and compassion and give voice to inconsiderable issues and those who would otherwise never be heard. His work can be seen in the GRIP exhibition Imaging Inequality.

Arif, Yasmeen

Yasmeen Arif is Professor of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR. Her overall research interest areas include biophilosophies and life, international law and humanitarianisms, science and technology studies, aesthetics, visual and material cultures, theory and epistemology in social anthropology/sociology. Her field experiences have been in Beirut, Lebanon and Delhi, India. Arif’s current writing is about a bio-political critique of identity in politics which follows from her book, Life, Emergent: The Social in the Afterlives of Violence which explores a politics of life across multiple global conditions of mass violence.

Benke, Liana Ivete

Liana Ivete Benke is an interdisciplinary visual culture researcher and independent lecturer in Visual Anthropology, currently part of the ISSP platform for contemporary photography and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture of the Art Academy of Latvia. Her research interests include various aspects of contemporary and vernacular photography, and socially engaged art. Co-author of the book Baltic Stories: A visual guide to spaces of culture (2021).

Bertelsen, Bjørn Enge

Bjørn Enge Bertelsen is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Bergen and the Academic Director of the Holberg Prize. In his research, Bertelsen has published extensively on urban and structural forms of inequality, dynamics of violence in (post-) war settings and multiple forms of political protest. Mozambique, Ghana and southern Africa are areas in which he has carried out fieldwork and research collaborations. Bertelsen is actively involved in different research projects at GRIP, in particular the Speculative Urban Futures project. Bertelsen was also the Executive Director of GRIP from 2019 to 2022.

Brillembourg, Alfredo

Alfredo Brillembourg is an architect and founder of the Urban-Think Tank and the Sustainable Living Urban Model Laboratory (SLUM Lab). Between 2007-2019, Alfredo has been professor at Columbia University and Chair of Architecture at ETHZ in Zurich. In 2020, he founded U-TT Oslo and the new Parangolè Journal with GRIP.

Buier, Natalia

Natalia Buier is an anthropologist currently researching water conflicts in Southern Spain. After obtaining a PhD degree from the Sociology and Social Anthropology department at the Central European University (Budapest, HU), she continued her interdisciplinary research at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and the University of Barcelona. Her current project is a historical ethnography of groundwater depletion with a focus on the unity of processes of extraction and exploitation. Her previous research addressed the political economy of infrastructural development, labor struggles and historical memory.

Chari, Sharad

Sharad Chari is a geographer at the University of California at Berkeley, and an interdisciplinary scholar of capitalism, biopolitics, state racism, agrarian transitions, work, sexuality, and post-imperial oceans. His key publications are Fraternal Capital (2004), The Development Reader (2008), Other Geographies (2017) and he is completing a book called Apartheid Remains.

Delamonica, Enrique

Enrique Delamonica, Senior Advisor Statistics and Monitoring (Poverty and Inequality), UNICEF, works on poverty reduction, equity, social protection, child rights, gender, financing social services, and how macro-economic trends impact children. He has published several books and articles on these issues. He taught economics, international development, policy analysis, statistics, and research methods at Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, New York University, Saint Peter’s College, and other universities. He is at the board of the Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy of the International Sociological Association.

Di Trani, Antonella

Antonella Di Trani is an anthropologist with a PhD from the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She is a lecturer in social anthropology for architecture at the Superior National School of Architecture of Paris – Val de Seine, ENSAPVS. Her main topics are the city, heritage and inequality in urban space. Antonella is currently involved in a European research programme on sustainability.

Diaz, Esperanza

Esperanza Diaz is a medical doctor educated in Spain (1995) and a general practice specialist in Norway since 2003. She is director of the Pandemic Centre and professor at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Bergen, and a senior researcher (20 %) at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Diaz has conducted research on immigrant health since 2008, written over a hundred peer-reviewed articles about the topic and published the book Migrant Health: A Primary Care Perspective.

Fischer, Andrew

Andrew Fischer is Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, part of Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Scientific Director of CERES the Dutch Research School for International Development. He is a development economist, demographer and social policy specialist, with a PhD from the London School of Economics and over 30 years of experience in development.

Ghosh, Avijit

Avijit Ghosh is a freelance photojournalist based in Kolkata, India. His work mostly focuses on the Socio-environmental impacts of climate change and humanitarian issues. Ghosh was born and brought up in a rural village of West Bengal and has later moved to a suburb of Kolkata to pursue a bachelor’s degree in arts and a diploma in Social Work as well as in Photography. His work can be seen in the GRIP exhibition Imaging Inequality.

Gressgård, Randi

Randi Gressgård is a professor of gender research in the social sciences at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) and affiliated with the research unit International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER), University of Bergen. Thematically, many of her publications revolve around migrations & minority issues, such as multiculturalism; post-colonialism; racialization; nationalism; Europeanization; East/West geopolitics; citizenship; borders & boundaries; and space & time. Randi’s research within the second subject area, gender & sexuality, can be grouped into two main categories: 1) feminist theory and problems of difference, and 2) gender and sexuality relations and politics. The third strand, urban governance & security, focuses on minority issues and critical thinking in the context of policy making & urban governance; and resilience politics & the Anthropocene.

Gupta, Pamila

Pamila Gupta is Professor at WISER (Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research) at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research interests include Portuguese colonial and Jesuit missionary history; diasporas, islands, tourism, and heritage in the Indian Ocean; and photography and visual cultures in East Africa.

Haas, Astrid

Astrid Haas is an urban economist whose research specializes in municipal and infrastructure finance. She is currently advising different African city governments in this capacity. In 2016, she was nominated by the University of Cape Town as one of Africa’s Young Leaders, for her work in this area.

Hage, Ghassan

Ghassan Hage is professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne. He works on whiteness and colonial racism from a comparative perspective. His current interest is in the notion of ‘social viability’. Ghassan’s main fieldwork for the last thirty years has been on the Lebanese transnational Diaspora.

Haldis Haukanes

Haldis Haukanes is a social anthropologist and Professor at the Department of Health Promotion and Development. Her research interests include rural social transformation, food studies, and gender and reproduction. Haukanes has done ethnographic research in the Czech Republic since 1990. She is also engaged in gender and reproductive health related research in Sub- Saharan Africa. She is the co-editor of the recent volume: Intimacy and mobility in an era of hardening borders. Gender, Reproduction, Regulation (Manchester University Press 2021, with Frances Pine)

Hujo, Katja

Katja Hujo is Senior Research Coordinator in the Transformative Social Policy Programme at UNRISD. Her work focuses on social policy, poverty and inequality, as well as socio-economic development. Her most recent co-edited book, Between Fault Lines and Front Lines: Shifting Power in an Unequal World, will be published by Bloomsbury in June 2022.

Jha, Rishi

Rishi Jha is a doctoral researcher at Lund University, Sweden. His dissertation focuses on capitalist urban redevelopments, slum resettlements, and governance in Indian megacities. Jha is also an eminent photographer, interested in visual representation of urban inequalities, and experiences of capitalist developments from the margins. His work can be seen in the GRIP exhibition Imaging Inequality.

Kerry Chance

University of Bergen

Kerry Ryan Chance is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at UiB. Kerry’s research focuses on two major topics in South Africa and the United States. One is the politics of urban ecology at the intersections of gender, race, and poverty. Another is the cultural dynamics of climate change, particularly their effects upon differentiated bodies. Broadly, her work examines how the urban poor, living on the precarious margins often without formalized work or basic infrastructure, come to inhabit political roles that transform economic and environmental relationships. She has published multiple articles and book chapters, as well as a monograph titled Living Politics in South Africa’s Urban Shacklands.

Kidanemariam, Mulu Beyene

Mulu Beyene Kidanemariam has studied and taught law at Mekelle University, Ethiopia.  He is currently a PhD student at the Faculty of Law, UiB, where his project examines the legal framework regulating the production and use of maternal mortality data. His research areas of interest include human rights, reproductive health rights, human rights indicators, and health data for accountability. He also belongs to a larger project, MARTISET.

Kiwan, Fadia

Fadia Kiwan is currently Director General of the Arab Women Organisation (AWO), under the auspices of the Ligue of Arab States, since june 2018. She was professor of political science at Saint Joseph University of Beirut, director of the postgraduate program (2000 -2015), and founder and director of the Institute of political science (2002-2014) at the same University. She was nominated honorary director of the Institute in 2014. Fadia Kiwan is very active in civil society activities, deeply committed to the field of advocacy for human rights, women rights, and quality of education, protection of the environment, democratization, public good governance and sustainable development.

Koch, Susanne

Susanne Koch is a researcher and lecturer at the Chair of Forest and Environmental Policy, Technical University of Munich, with a PhD in sociology. Her research at the interface of environmental and science studies focuses on gender- and geography-related inequalities in science and the role of knowledge diversity in the context of societal transformation. Susanne leads the multi-method study ‘In-Forest’, which seeks to enhance the understanding of why inequalities in academia persist, which is a crucial condition for overcoming them.

Koehler, Gabriele

Gabriele Koehler is a development economist. A former UN official, she is currently affiliated with UNRISD, and a member of WECF, the UNICEF NatCom Germany and the Treaty Alliance. She teaches and writes on human rights, gender justice, eco-social policy, and especially the UN SDGs, social inclusion and universal social protection.

Kovacevic, Milorad

Milorad Kovacevic is a statistician and an expert for measuring human development and progress of society under constraints of inequality, vulnerability and uncertainty. Milorad has been chief statistician of UNDP – Human Development Report Office between 2010 and 2020. Currently he is a statistical advisor for a variety of development projects that include gender inequality, poverty, environmental vulnerability and inequality.

Kuldova, Tereza Østbø

Tereza Østbø Kuldova is Research Professor at the Work Research Institute, Oslo Metropolitan University and a social anthropologist. She is the author of How Outlaws Win Friends and Influence People (2019) and Luxury Indian Fashion: A Social Critique (2016), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on the anthropology of crime, labor, organizations, urbanity, surveillance, and consumer culture.

LaBelle, Brandon

Brandon LaBelle is Professor at the Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art, University of Bergen. He develops and presents artistic projects within a range of international contexts, often working collaboratively and in public. This leads to performative installations, poetic theater, and research actions aimed at forms of experimental community making.

Lien, Ida Z.

Ida Z. Lien is an urban economist and co-founder of Urban-A, where she is the Head of Analysis. Building on her experience from the UN and private sector, Lien’s research and policy work centers on urban crises response, economic recovery, and city systems. Through interdisciplinary approaches, Lien has engaged closely with various state and non-state actors to develop and implement sustainable urban projects.

Liu, Joyce C.H.

Joyce C.H. Liu is Chair Professor at the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan; Director, International Center for Cultural Studies & International Program of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, University System of Taiwan. Currently, she is leading two research projects: Conflict, Justice, Decolonization: Critical Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, and Migration, Logistics, and Unequal Citizens in the Global Context.

Llevat, Mabel

Mabel Llevat is a Barcelona based artist and researcher. Llevat has organized and participated at photography workshops with the subject of society, gender and race, and done worke as part of the collective “Entropicas” (Spain, 2020) with workshops of eco-feminist photography and dance that subscribe solidarity economy and against the conflicts of capital, financial benefit and individualism. Her work can be seen in the GRIP exhibition Imaging Inequality.

Idunn Lüllau Holthe

Lüllau Holthe, Idunn

Idunn Lüllau Holthe is a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on the politics of cultural heritage in post-Arab Spring Egypt. She has previously worked on climate change and vulnerability in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya, and was GRIP’s Communications and Outreach Officer from 2019-2021.

McNeish, John-Andrew

John-Andrew McNeish is a Social Anthropologist and Professor of International Environment and Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). He has conducted research, published and taught University courses on issues of poverty and inequality, indigenous rights and politics, natural resource politics and conflict with a particular focus on Latin America for over twenty years. Starting in 2022 with financing from the Norwegian Research Council he will lead Empowered Futures: A Global Research School Navigating the Social and Environmental Consequences of Low-Carbon Energy Transition.

Mehta, Krishen

Krishen Mehta is a Senior Global Justice Fellow at Yale University. Krishen is Director of Tax Justice Network in London, an Advisor to Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program in New York, and a member of the Steering Group of the Independent Commission for Reform of International Corporate Taxation. He is co-editor of the books Global Tax Fairness and Tax Justice and Global Inequality.

Meneses, Maria Paula

Maria Paula Meneses is a Principal researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra. A Mozambican scholar, her research focuses on the political history and socio-legal complexity of southern Africa. At the heart of her interests are the relations between knowledge, power and societies, paying special attention to people who experienced the violence of the colonial encounter.

Mjaaland, Thera

Thera Mjaaland initially trained as an art photographer in the UK and with associate professor competence in Fine Art. Additionally, she has a Cand. Polit.-degree (MA) in Social Anthropology (2004) and a PhD in Gender and Development (2013) from University of Bergen. There Mjaaland also served as an associate professor at the Gender and Development MPhil-program (2013-15), and as scientific coordinator for the international Bergen Summer Research School (PhD-level) (2018-20). Her research has centered primarily on gender issues and education in the Tigray region of North Ethiopia. Currently, she is involved as a freelance researcher in the Fafo-project “Refugees for Development”, with a study on Eritrean refugees’ livelihood strategies in Ethiopia.

Odumosu, Temi

Temi Odumosu is an art historian, curator, and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Malmö University in Sweden. Her research and curatorial practices are concerned with race and visual coding in popular culture, colonial archives/archiving, slavery and visuality, postmemorial art and performance, and ethics of care-in-representation. Overall, she is focused on the ways art can mediate social transformation and healing.

Patel, Zarina

Zarina Patel is an Associate Professor of Human Geography in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town. Her research addresses the politics and practices of achieving just and sustainable urban transitions. She contributes to debates within the wider social sciences focused on environmental justice, transdisciplinary practice, and southern theory. Zarina is an inaugural editor of Environmental Planning F and former Editor in Chief of Urban Forum, she serves on the editorial boards of Local Environment, and npj Urban Sustainability.

Penda, Alice Christel

Alice Christel Penda is a Cameroonian visual artist working in Cameroon. Her artistic practice focuses on re-examining history, environment and climate emergency and free-expression/civil society. She is currently working upon the post-colonial economical system of Central Africa, and its impact on populations. Her work can be seen in the GRIP exhibition Imaging Inequality.

Perez-Bustillo, Camilo

Camilo Perez-Bustillo is Visiting Professor of Human Rights and Social Justice at National Taiwan University (international poverty law, rights of migrants, indigenous peoples) and Fellow at CASBS-Stanford University. Camilo is the author of Human Rights, Hegemony, and Utopia in Latin America: Poverty, Forced Migration and Resistance in Mexico and Colombia (Brill 2016), and co-founder of International Tribunal of Conscience of Peoples in Movement; Witness at the Border.

Rishi, Gunika

Gunika Rishi is a Doctoral researcher (2023-26) at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, NTNU and examining the experiences of Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URMs) during family reunification using a social anthropological lens. She has a background in Architecture (2010-2015) and Urban planning (2018-2020). Her research interests include housing rights, migration, gender studies, race and visual ethnography.

Roelen, Keetie

Keetie Roelen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Development at the Open University in the UK. She is a development economist by training and her research interests include the dynamics of (child) poverty, the psychosocial side of poverty and the role of social protection in improving people’s lives. Her work is primarily located in sub-Saharan Africa, South East and South Asia and the Caribbean and has informed policy and practice of organisations including UNICEF, Save the Children and World Vision.

Rosário, Carmeliza

Carmeliza Rosário is a Social and Development Anthropologist, with extensive experience researching poverty, vulnerability, inequality, and gender. In addition, she has conducted research on social media and commentary, sexuality, sexual and reproductive rights, and governance. Currently, she is focusing on decolonial knowledge production through research on African female traditional leadership. Her main country of research is Mozambique. She holds a PHD in Anthropology from the University of Bergen (Norway) and is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (Norway).

Rubing, Anders

Anders Rubing is an architect and a Ph.D. candidate at The Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) at UiB. Rubing was co-editor for the award-winning book The City Between Freedom and Security. He is an architecture critic for Bergens Tidende and Arkitektur N and was one of the curators for the exhibition Jävla kritiker!.

Sachs Olsen, Cecilie

Cecilie Sachs Olsen is a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research at Oslo Metropolitan University. Her work revolves around developing creative methods for urban research and exploring how artistic practice can be used as a framework to analyse and re-imagine urban space and politics.

 

 

Semán, Ernesto

Ernesto Semán teaches Latin American history and the history of U.S. foreign policy at the University of Bergen, Norway. His next forthcoming book is a history of antipopulism in Argentina. He has written extensively about Latin American politics, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Financial Times.

Sen, Atreyee

Atreyee Sen is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She is a political anthropologist of urban South Asia. Her research interests focus on religio-political movements and their impact on poverty, slums, livelihoods and cash flows in marginal urban spaces.

Shah, Svati P.

Svati P. Shah is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. An anthropologist whose work critiques questions of caste, sexuality, space, political economy, and labor migration, Svati is currently working on a monograph on changing political landscapes of LGBTQIA+ politics and the rise of authoritarianism in India. Their first book, Street Corner Secrets (2014) was an ethnography of sex work and informal sector labor migration in Mumbai.

Siu, Erika

Erika Siu is the Deputy Director of the Think Tanks project at the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois. Erika has worked as the Secretariat Director of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation and conducted research for the International Centre for Tax and Development, the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters, and the UN Development Programme.

Styve, Maria Dyveke

Maria Dyveke Styve is a Max Weber Post-Doctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. Her research interests span the political economy of development, dependency theory, economic anthropology, decolonial epistemologies, racial capitalism, critical race theory and economic history.  

Tiwari, Meera

Meera Tiwari is Director Impact and Innovation for the School of Education and Communities. Her research interests are exploring social and economic poverties within the Capability Approach using mixed methods in both Northern and Southern contexts as well as examining actor engagement in development. She continues to use and critique the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for poverty reduction including its ‘Leave no one behind’ ambition. Meera Tiwari has conducted primary research in the slums of Mumbai and Nairobi, as well as in rural India, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Her recent research comprises investigating how grassroots organisations can enable communities to engage with sustainability and ecological practices in UK and India with the ultra-poor households.

Tjeldflaat, Andreas

Andreas Tjeldflaat is an architect and design engineer based in New York City and Bergen. He is the founder of research and design studio Framlab, an advisor with the UNECE REM, and has taught design courses at Columbia University, Cornell University, and the University of Pennsylvania.