Malene Karensdatter Brandshaug has been hired as a new postdoctoral research fellow. She will primarily be studying local efforts at creating rights for rivers in Peru.
Malene is a social anthropologist with a special interest in water and the relationship between humans and nature more broadly. Her Ph.D. dissertation is based on fieldwork among small-scale farmers in the southern Peruvian highlands and addresses issues of water scarcity related to environmental change and coloniality. It covers topics such as nature management, water practices and politics, infrastructure, development, environmental protection, and postcolonial power relations.
Malene will contribute to the project with a case from a province in the Peruvian Andes where indigenous people are working towards the recognition of water bodies as living beings with subject rights. Her project will also have a comparative aspect, exploring similarities and differences to current developments in Norway or New Zealand.
Malene’s postdoc will be grounded in in-depth ethnographic fieldwork. During her time on the project, she will also work on the manuscript for a monography that combines findings from her Ph.D. and her postdoctoral research.