Visiting PhD scholar

Photo: Frederik Arhøj

Marie Gravesen is a visiting PhD researcher at CAS.  She was a former Masters student here, and we’re very happy to welcome her here in her role as PhD Fellow in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the University of Cologne.

We asked Marie to write a little about herself, her PhD project, and her overall research interests:

As a former master student at CAS, it is great to be back in the capacity as a
visiting PhD scholar. After graduating at CAS in 2013, I was approved for a PhD position in a Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) funded by the European Union. I started my PhD at the University of Cologne in 2013 with a project entitled ‘Resilience in East African Landscapes’.

Research area

Broadly speaking, in my research I work with land issues in one of the areas in Kenya that was most heavily colonized before Independence and which to this day continues to hold a largely fragmented social, ecological and political landscape.  One of the many complexities occurs when the legal owners of a piece of land are not present and the supposedly vacant land becomes settled by (semi)pastoral groups and small-scale farmers, who employ different strategies to claim a right of presence and access to the resources. My study of these complexities contextualizes the changes between colonial times of relative homogeneity and control by the few, over the Independence years with resettlement schemes and politicisation of land, to today’s social fragmentation and heterogeneity in aspects of land management, ownership and legal support.  I use a combination of biographical interviews, aerial photographs and archival research of colonial correspondence, legal documents for court cases and newspaper clippings.

My PhD project is within an interdisciplinary research programme that has facilitated my participation in various research stays, trainings, conferences and knowledge exchange workshops in Stockholm, York, London, Oxford, Ghent and Dar es Salaam, as well as being based in Cologne in Germany and doing long-term fieldwork in Kenya. Travelling and exchanging ideas in all of these places has been inspiring, challenging and has brought me far in terms of developing useful skills as a researcher. However, there is no place like home, as they say, and CAS does feel like home to me. Although with various limitations due to its size, the department still holds a position of high esteem by scholars outside of Denmark and it continues to be a central hub for Africanists. For me, CAS is a place where one feels welcome, and where there is always a way to make things happen in terms of initiating collaborations and clearing out formalities. The combination of well-reflected students, and the positive, inspiring atmosphere makes CAS a brilliant place for me to make a stop at this point in my academic career.