Hanne Overgaard Mogensen

Primary fields of research

Anthropology of health, health care systems, AIDS and antiretroviral treatment, anthropology as a social practice.

Region: Africa (Uganda, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Tanzania)

Member of the researcher groups Business and Organisation, and Health and Life Conditions.

I have carried out research on health care seeking behaviour, health care systems, child health, reproductive health, AIDS and antiretroviral treatment, primarily in Zambia and Uganda but also in other parts of Africa. My research on the social consequences of antiretroviral treatment has included HIV positive Africans in Denmark and entailed questions of integration and gender and sociality in both Denmark and Africa.

Recently I have become involved in research on human security, peace and reconciliation in Northern Uganda where two decades of insurgency has come to an end and internally displaced people are returning home.

Through research collaborations between Danish, Uganda and Vietnamese universities I have over the years participated in numerous inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural research projects in international health. As a consequence I have become interested epistemological questions concerning teaching and the practice of anthropology.

I am the author of AIDS is a Kind of Kahungo that Kills on AIDS in Zambia, co-editor of an edited volume in Danish on anthropological perspectives on family and social relations, and have contributed to Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda on the first generation of people on antiretroviral treatment in Uganda. I have furthermore written a literary ethnography on women in Uganda which will be published in 2016.

CV

Born: 21.08.1969

Education:
Ph.D. in anthropology, University of Copenhagen (1999)

Current position:
2003  Associate professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

Previous positions and scholarships:
1999-2003  Assistant professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

2001-2002 Fulbright Scholar, Department of Anthropology and Institute of African Studies, Columbia University

1999  Assistant professor, Department of International Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University Copenhagen

1997-2000   Consultant for the World Health Organization, COWI consult and Danida. 

1997  Visiting scholar, Department of Social medicine, Harvard University

Current research

The practice of Anthropology: People and Ideas in Action

In recent years there has been an increasing demand for anthropologists both inside and outside of academia. In this project we ask what anthropologists actually do in the various kinds of collaborations they become part of. The project studies the practices of anthropologists in four professional arenas: health care, science and technology research, business and management in order to identify the tacit competences that characterise work practices of anthropologists and to pave some of the way for a new understanding of the role of the humanities in society. The purpose is to move beyond the increasingly obsolete distinction between knowledge and its application by changing focus from anthropology as research to anthropology as a social practice inside and outside academia.

Governing Transition in Northern Uganda: Trust and Land

Collaborative project between Gulu University in Northern Uganda and Danish universities examining links between land, trust/mistrust and governance with emphasis on gender and generation.

Teaching

Medical anthropology, general anthropology, field methods, Africa

Responsible for the Masters Programme on Anthropology of Health.

Knowledge of languages

Danish, English, French
Elementary knolwege of dhopadhola (nilotic language in Uganda)