Anne Sofie Beer Nielsen

I am a PhD fellow at the Department of Anthropology, focusing on conflicts that arise from living by and with the sea, in Denmark. With rising sea levels and more frequent and severe storm surges in the not-so-distant horizon, coastal protection plans are becoming increasingly urgent.

This PhD project is part of the project 'Coastal Conflicts: Mapping Storm Surge Protection Disagreements and Solutions in Denmark'. Together with PI Kristoffer Albris and student assistant Emma Kirketerp Nielsen, we are digitally mapping all conflicts related to storm surge and coastal protection in Denmark and identifying the various sources of conflict, including proposed solutions, types of protection, financing aesthetics, and ecological concerns.

The aim is to provide insights that can help prevent future coastal protection plans from being delayed or canceled, with detrimental consequences to communities that are meanwhile left unprotected.

Based on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork in three different coastal areas in Denmark, the PhD project will examine the positions taken by citizens, municipal planners, and interest groups involved in these conflicts. I am particularly interested in the concerns, values, and risk perceptions that shape their positions.

A central aspect of my research interests lies in exploring the potential of audio-visual methods. I am interested in what the audio-visual approach can bring as a method, what impact it has on the field, fieldwork, and the fieldworker, as well as what dialogical and analytical possibilities it offers and how it can be sued as a genre of communication.