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Fartein is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, where he also completed his Master’s degree. His academic path includes an extensive ethnographic study in Iceland, focusing on neopaganism. His master’s thesis, investigated how modernity and technological change influence the revival of pagan beliefs in Iceland and the wider Euro-American region.

For his PhD, Fartein is now studying the social and cultural impacts of generative and conversational Artificial Intelligence in the United States, specifically within California’s AI industry. His research examines how AI technologies shape new forms of life, kinship, and concepts of personhood. With a particular focus on digital afterlife technologies, AI companions, and virtual humans, Fartein investigates how AI is percieved as a new form of life and the ways it enables distinct life practices and relationships. His analysis integrates perspectives from digital anthropology and cyborg anthropology, situating AI as both a life form and a facilitator of specific forms of life.

Fartein’s research interests cover a range of topics, including the Anthropology of Technology, the Anthropology of Life, digital technologies, Artificial Intelligence, and New Religious Movements. By combining these areas, his work explores the ways technology shapes and is shaped by human culture.

Podcast

Newspaper articles

(Morgenbladet)

(Morgenbladet)

SANT100: Invitasjon til sosialantropologi (2024)

SANT102: Sosialt liv i globalt perspektiv  (recurring guest lecturer in 2022 and 2023)

SANT280-10: Current Anthropological Research: New Technologies and the Future of the Human (guest lecturer)

Fartein's current project, formerly titled "Ghosts in the Machine: A Study of Digital Immortality and its Impact on Kinship, Personhood, and Life After Death in the US," is part of the broader "Technoscientific Immortality: A Study of Human Futures" research initiative at the University of Bergen. The project has been renamed "The Affective Machine: An Ethnographic study of chatbots in the United States," reflecting a subtle shift from a focus on death and funerary customs to a broader theoretical exploration of anthropological theories regarding kinship and technology.