A New Postdoc in Anthropology

The Forum for Africa Studies, and the Dept. of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology welcomes Dr. Anders Norge Lauridsen, Anthropologist from the University of Gothenburg, who recently obtained an International postdoc grant from the Swedish Research Council. Anders will be working on the project, entitled “A People Without History”?: Reclaiming the Sihanaka Past through Collaborative Historiography. The ethnographic setting of the project is among Sihanaka communities in Madagascar. The project is based at the Forum for Africa Studies/Dept. of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology. This three-year international postdoc is administered by Uppsala University, but Anders will spend a large part of the time at Aarhus University, and doing fieldwork. Yet he will still be able to contribute to Uppsala University. Anders comments:
- I very much look forward to becoming part of the research environment at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology and the Forum for Africa Studies.

Anders Norge completed his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Gothenburg in May 2025 with the thesis, The Living Papyrus: Ritual, Cosmology and Immanent Divinity among the Sihanaka of Madagascar.

Building on this research and fieldwork in Madagascar since 2015, the current project aims to co-write a history of the Sihanaka with the Sihanaka community of Anororo. By bringing together oral traditions, archival research, and ethnography, the project explores how historical knowledge is produced, transmitted, and negotiated, and how such collaborative practices can reclaim the past of a people long marginalised as a “people without history”. The project has also a connection to Japan, Anders explains:
- The project benefits from scholarly support from colleagues abroad, particularly Professor Takumi Moriyama at the University of Tokyo.

Thanks to this new project the Forum will get additional thematic and regional competence. Welcome, Anders!