Keynotes

Prof. Tine Damsholt, University of Copenhagen

Tine Damsholt is Professor of European Ethnology at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research focuses on materiality, embodiment, everyday life, and political culture in 18th-, 19th-century and contemporary Denmark. Her doctoral dissertation from 1996 analysed patriotism and civic spirit in Denmark in the 18th century (Fædrelandskærlighed og borgerånd: en analyse af den patriotiske diskurs i Danmark i sidste del af 1700-tallet), while her latest edited book from 2022 is Crossroads of Heritage and Religion: Legacy and Sustainability of World-Heritage-Site Moravian Christiansfeld (with Marie Riegels Melchior, Christina Petterson, Tine R. Reeh). It discusses the intersection of heritage and religion through the case study of Moravian Christiansfeld, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in July 2015, and its everyday lives. Presently Damsholt is investigating the ongoing disruptions of everyday life temporalities, and in particular the question of how the hope and care for more viable futures are practiced within quotidian practices in the home.

For further information, see https://saxoinstitute.ku.dk/staff/?pure=en/persons/118761

Keynote: “What will happen to the hand sanitizer in the supermarket?” Material objects and affective agency during pandemic everyday life”

Prof. Bjørnar Olsen, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway

Bjørnar Olsen is Professor of Archaeology at the UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. His research covers archaeological theory, Arctic archaeology, contemporary archaeology, material culture, and museology. Olsen is especially known for his work on the turn to things in humanities and social sciences, and symmetrical archaeology. Olsen’s books include In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects (2010), Persistent Memories: Pyramiden – a Soviet Mining Town in the High Arctic (2010, with E. Andreassen and H. Bjerck), Archaeology: The Discipline of Things (2012, with M. Shanks, T. Webmoor and C. Witmore), and Ruin Memories: Materialities, Aestehtics and the Archaeology of the Recent Past (2014, with Þ. Pétursdóttir). Among his recent research projects is the Unruly Heritage: An Archaeology of the Anthropocene (2017–2021).

For further information, see https://en.uit.no/ansatte/person?p_document_id=42197&p_dimension_id=88152

Keynote: “Things are actors – OK. But do they have any theoretical agency?”