Marianne Hedegaard

CV

Ph.d.-studerende

Institut for Tværkulturelle og Regionale Studier, Københavns Universitet, 1 mar. 2016 → 28 feb. 2019

2018 Research exchange, University College London (UCL), Department of Anthropology

2016 Ph.d.-fellow, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies

2016 Research assistant, National Institute of Public Health

2015 Junior consultant at Gemeinschaft, anthropological consulting firm

2015 cand.scient.anth, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

2012 BA anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

2011 Student exchange, Université Paris-Diderot, Paris

Short presentation

My ph.d.-project Burn out and Bliss, Affective Economies of Working Bodies deals with mind-body practices of mindfulness and the influx of these in Danish workplaces. My research is grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in two companies that have carried out mindfulness interventions (MBI's) in 2017.

With my project, I wish to contribute to current discussions on work life, subjectivity and affect. The main questions guiding my research are 1) How does a person ‘become mindful’? (Which social and embodied practices are involved in the enactment of the mindful person and the cultivation of 'good' emotions? What kind of subject is imagined in this process?) 2) What happens when the pursuit of mindfulness enters a corporate economy? (How are different values (economic, moral, social) entangled in and ascribed to mindfulness?)

I work as part of the international research project Buddhism, Business and Believers (BBB) founded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (FKK) and the Carlsberg Foundation. The BBB-project attends to the relationship between economy and religion with a particular focus on contemporary relations between business and Buddhism, and the way in which Buddhism mediates distinctions between virtue and value, spirituality and materiality, gifts and commodities. 

My earlier research includes long term fieldwork in Rishikesh, India, studying yoga practices and ethical becoming among international tourists. 

Teaching

• Culture and Social Analysis (masters programme Cross-Cultural Studies) 
• Cultural Translation (masters programme Cross-Cultural Studies)
• Qualitative methods and research-based teaching
• Organizational anthropology

Primary fields of research

• Contemplative practices, mindfulness, yoga, wellbeing, self-care techniques, work life, Denmark, India, anthropology of the body, organizational anthropology