Nina Grønlykke Mollerup

Short presentation

My research revolves around media and their role in societal changes, particularly in the context of conflict and repression with a focus on the disenfranchised and actors who challenge the status quo. I am specialised in the Middle East and have conducted ethnographic fieldworks in Egypt, Syria and the Öresund Region.

I have a degree in anthropology from University of Copenhagen (2009). I have taught anthropology, visual methods and social structures in the Middle East. I am co-convener of the e-seminar series under Media Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (www.media-anthropology.net/). I participate in the research projects, DIGINAUTS and Images of Conflict, Conflicting Images.

My current postdoc project, Navigating uncertainties, making places familiar: Migrants’ media use during flight, arrival and beyond, is part of DIGINAUTS and runs from October 2018-September 2020.

Primary fields of research

• Activism and resistance
• Journalism
• The Middle East
• Refugees
• Social movements
• Conflict and violence
• Repressive societies
• Media anthropology
• Materialities of media
• Global flows
• Futuremaking

Current research

In the continuously and rapidly shifting circumstances of borders closing, laws changing and other obstacles appearing and disappearing, migrants navigate in uncertainty and precarity as they move through and to unfamiliar places. In this vulnerable situation, migrants increasingly use digital media when moving, countering language barriers, creating knowledge and building bonds and trust (Crawley et al. 2017; Gillespie, Osseiran, and Cheesman 2018; Van Liempt and Zijlstra 2017). Their digital media use is intrinsically entangled with policy changes, technological developments and volunteer initiatives. This research project positions media related practices (Hobart 2010) of migrants in the context of the complex interplay between policy, technology and activism and approaches media as place-making (Moores 2012; Mollerup 2015). The project seeks to ethnographically examine (1) how migrants in the Oresund Region use media related practices to navigate shifting and uncertain circumstances, including during their journey to the Oresund Region and (2) how these practices interplay with policy, technology and volunteer initiatives. The project will pay particular attention to when migrants have carried out their journeys in order to contextualise these with specific policy changes, technological developments and establishment of volunteer initiatives. The project will contribute to DIGINAUTS by ethnographically shedding light on the interplay of migrants’ media related practices with policy, technology and volunteer initiatives through careful collaboration with other DIGINAUTS researchers.