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Biographical Sketch

Vigdis Broch-Due is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway, where she also holds a special professorship in International Poverty Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences. In addition to a Dr. Philos. degree in anthropology (1991), her academic background includes studies in sociology, geography, comparative literature, and philosophy. In 2015, she was granted a four-year leave to serve as Scientific Director at the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) in Oslo—a national institution that fosters excellence through group-based, multidisciplinary research across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences on topics proposed by scholars themselves. In January 2020, she was appointed for a four-year term to the board of the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) by the Ministry of Higher Education and Science, following her nomination by the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters ().

Broch-Due’s academic career has taken her from teaching positions in anthropology at the Universities of Oslo and Washington (Seattle, USA) to the directorship of the Poverty and Prosperity Research Program at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala (Sweden), and to senior research appointments at the Universities of Cambridge, SOAS, and the LSE (UK), as well as at Rutgers University (USA). Over the course of her career, she has been awarded thirteen major research grants supporting her various projects.

Broch-Due has developed numerous courses and international study programs at both MA and PhD levels, within anthropology and through interdisciplinary collaborations across the humanities and social sciences. She led the international MPhil program throughout its decade of operation, recruiting talented students from Africa, Asia, Canada, Europe, and Norway. She has also served as PhD coordinator. Her supervision record is extensive, and she has been a member of a wide range of academic boards at local, national, and international levels. Broch-Due has been actively involved in research evaluation, including the assessment of research applications, centers of excellence, and professorial appointments in Scandinavia, Germany, the UK, and the USA.

Broch-Due has participated in several documentary film projects in Kenya, India, and South America, including extended field visits to Indigenous communities such as the Kogi of Colombia, the Huichol of Mexico, and the Maya of Guatemala. She has also undertaken numerous consultancies in East Africa and beyond—for example, contributing to IFAD’s Future Focus on Rural Poverty, assessing the European Commission’s poverty alleviation policies, serving on UN expert groups on global poverty in New York, and evaluating humanitarian and development programs for NORAD, FAO, and SIDA.

Her research career in East Africa spans more than four decades, focusing primarily on pastoral communities in northern Kenya. She has conducted major ethnographic and historical studies among Turkana communities—herders, cultivators, foragers, and fishers—and, more recently, in the pastoral borderlands where Turkana intersect with Samburu, Borana, Somali, Maasai, and Pokot groups. 

Another major area of expertise concerns the history of poverty and its ethnographic variations, including European poverty from the Middle Ages onward and colonial encounters within the British Empire, particularly in India and Africa. She has examined how global discourses of development and inequality intersect with local understandings of wealth, gender, and morality, linking African ethnography with comparative studies of European and colonial histories of poverty.

In her current work, Broch-Due develops a sensory and multispecies anthropology that explores sensation, perception, embodiment, temporality, and interspecies relations. Drawing inspiration from biology, geology, philosophy, comparative literature, and material culture studies, this research investigates how sensory and social worlds are formed through ongoing interactions between living beings and the landscapes they inhabit.

Broch-Due’s writings bridge social theory and natural history, ethnography and philosophy, offering new perspectives on how ecological, social, temporal, and moral life intertwine. Her publications address themes such as gender and embodiment, cosmology, violence and memory, the materiality of environments, and the transformations of trust under conditions of change. Together, her projects seek to illuminate how different forms of life—human and animal—sense, shape, and sustain each other within a shared, but unevenly experienced, world.

Her books and edited volumes include:

Books

Broch-Due, V. Rudie, I. and Bleie, T (eds.) Carved Flesh/Cast Selves: Gendered Symbols and Social Practices. Oxford & Providence: Berg Press. 1993 

Anderson, D. and Broch-Due, V. The Poor Are Not Us: Poverty and Pastoralism in Eastern Africa. Oxford & Athens: James Curry & Ohio University Press. 1999 

Broch-Due, V. and Schroeder, R. Producing Nature and Poverty in Africa.
Uppsala & Rutgers: The Nordic Africa Institute Press & Transaction Press. 2000 

Broch-Due, V. Violence and Belonging: The Quest for Identity in Post Colonial Africa. London & New York: Routledge. 2005 

Broch-Due, V. & Ystanes, M. (eds.) Trust and its Tribulation: Towards an Interdisciplinary Engagement. Oxford & New York: Berghahn, 2016 

Broch-Due, V. & Bertelsen, B.E (eds.) Violent Reverberations: Global Modalities of Trauma. London &New York. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 

Broch-Due, V. & Ystanes, M. (eds.) Trust and its Tribulation: Towards an Interdisciplinary Engagement. Oxford & New York: Berghahn, 2020 (new paperback version).   

Teaching Portfolio at The Department of Social Anthropology

 SANT285-9 / SANT310-2 Sensory Worlds Across Times and Cultures

To put it simply, approaching the senses from an anthropological perspective allows us to understand their vital role in people's everyday lives, both personal and public, across different social, cultural, and historical settings.

The course is conceived of as a journey through time, place and across species. It is a journey that draws on diverse ethnographic examples from around the world and examines the sensory engagements afforded by rainforests, savannahs, slums, cities, multicultural markets, and the interiors of buildings. It is also a journey that incorporates sensory examples from the world of fiction, art, and the material forms that frame our contemporary lives. The senses build communicative bridges to other species, and we will explore the ways humans, animals, and plants interact across sensory worlds.

The journey will take us back to colonial times to recover aspects of our disciplinary history when anthropologists classified their subjects in foreign lands according to a sensory, evolutionary, hierarchical schema based on race. It will also take us back to medieval Europe where the senses were employed in making gender distinctions and other binary classifications. In both cases, the senses were pressed into service by structures of power which produced marginalization and inequality on a societal and global scale.

Together we will explore and analyze sensory worlds through a multi-media approach - consisting of lectures, texts, sound clips, film, photo, podcasts, and forays into the savory environs of food markets. Aside from those specializing in anthropology, this course will be of interest to students across the social sciences and humanities. 

SANT 285-5 --The Shape of Time: An anthropological inquiry into theories of temporality and materiality (10 Credits, Con Amore course, BA level).

‘Time’ and ‘matter’ are terms that at first glance may seem both common-sense and commonplace, albeit rather abstract. Upon closer scrutiny, however, ‘time’ and ‘matter’ and the ways in which they are embedded and transform, happen to be one of the oldest and most complex subjects of philosophical reflection, artistic representation and aesthetic discourse. ‘Time’ and ‘matter’, and the multiple forms and processes they give rise to, underpins virtually all aspects of life, both the rhythms of the everyday and the material culture and buildings we inhabit, but also those experiences that accumulate over a life-course, and across the generations. ‘Time’ and ‘matter’ structure the entire physical world; from the universe down to the specific milieus that humans share with other species. ‘Time’ and ‘matter’ are also powerfully at work in memories, imaginaries, cosmologies, religions and futures.  Historical and cross-cultural analysis of these concepts show them to be as changeable and various as they are grand and important. The shaping of ‘time’ and ‘matter’ are shot through with issues of power and hegemony, being at stake in much political struggle both in the past and the present. 

In this course we explore together how scholars across the humanities and social sciences have conceptualized, researched and represented this enigma of time, matter, form and fluidity. We will examine the temporal regimes embedded in the work of Hutton, Darwin, Freud, Bergson, Whitehead, Fabian, and Deleuze, and explore how matter is analysed in contemporary schools of thought such as ‘Object Oriented Ontology’, ‘New Materialism’ and ‘Post-humanism’. We will critically engage these theories from an anthropological perspective by bringing ethnographic examples into the discussion. We will take a closer look at the analytical contributions to this scholarly field by anthropologists, psychologists, geographers, archaeologists, and historians but also how the entanglements of myriad forms of materialities and temporalities are artistically expressed in fiction, painting, film and exhibitions.

SANT 304 – Introducing anthropology and its subjects: history, poverty, and social transformation (15 credits, MA level, taught on Mphil. in Anthropology of Development - MASV-SADE, 2004-2016)

Concerns about poverty - who are the 'poor'; why are they poor; and what can be deemed proper responses to their condition - have long been at the core of discourses about society and its 'others'. European views of the poor were exported throughout the empires, in this process shaping perceptions of indigenous societies and colonial policies directed towards them. European ideas about gender, class and race continue in the post-colonial world in various transmutations, to effect discourses of development. The course explores how local and global ideas of social inequality interact. It focuses on the implications of such encounters for the social identities of the poor and for interventions into their lives by states, mission and transnational aid agencies.Although a category like "the poor" seems too abstract and generic to generate much specific ethnography, it does in fact consist largely of the classical subjects of anthropology. Indeed, the discipline of the discipline of anthropology itself grew out of the 19th century global reconfiguration of "poverty", "the state" and the "public sphere". Poverty continued to be addressed in anthropological scholarship, although intermittently, after the second world-war to become crystallised as the problem matter in the sub-field of the Anthropology of Development and globalization studies.By following the history of the heterogeneous category of "the poor" from an anthropological perspective, this course is designed as an introduction to both mainstream and development anthropology on the master level.The course aims to provide students with the basic analytical tools for addressing critical issues of globalization particularly as they affect the South, by linking method and theory in anthropology with the detailed case material and thematic studies that emerges from field research. By focusing on poverty, the course aims to develop student ́s grasp of the ways in which anthropologists have theorised social and economic change, and sensitise students to the ethical implications of anthropologists practical engagement with development intervention both during the colonial and post-colonial era.

SANT 309 – Conceptualizing society: Applications of anthropological theory (15 credits MA level – taught on Mphil. in Anthropology of Development - MASV-SADE, 2004-2016)

This course focuses on the end stage of the research process, notably the crafting of the ethnographic product in its many guises; mostly as texts, but also as film, or as soundtracks.All students are to read and critically work through a selection of anthropological monographs that covers different continents, different theoretical perspectives, and different stages in the history of anthropology. The course explores the history of ethnographic representation and its reception and engages students in the theories and experiences that informed different templates of writing and the analytical controversy engendered. The course looks into the ways in which new technologies have influenced and multiplied ethnographic modes of representation from the print media only to the inclusion of film, sound and lately, the web. Through studies of selected anthropological monographs - classical as well as more resent - the students are to develop insights in the comparative analytical use of anthropological theory on complex empirical cases. For the final exam the students are to demonstrate abilities for comparative analytical reasoning over different ethnographic cases and different media of ethnographic representation.

SANT 301 Antropologisk kunnskapsproduksjon og etnografisk praksis (20 Credits, MA nivå, taught in Norwegian)

Emnet tar opp metodiske og kunnskapsteoretiske områder i faget. Det går inn på aktuelle og sentrale problemstillinger, og tar opp teoridanning og debatter med en primær målsetning om å utvikle studentenes egen forskingsferdigheter. Emnet gir et kritisk inntak til antropologisk forskingspraksis og kunnskapsproduksjon: deltakende observasjon og feltarbeid, produksjon og handsaming av data, framstilling og analyse av empirisk materiale, og argument utforming. Det viser analytiske framgangsmåter ved bruk av aktuelle teoretiske perspektiv til konkrete forskingsformål, der faget sitt sentrale helhetsperspektiv på samfunn og kultur blir ivaretatt. 

SANT 302 --Individuell prosjektutvikling (10 Credits, MA level, taught in Norwegian)

Dette emnet supplerer SANT301 og består av seminer og individuell veiledning der målet er individuell prosjektutvikling og å sikre at studenten utformer et prosjekt som lar seg gjennomføre basert på ett semesters feltarbeid. Konkret blir dette arbeidet utviklet gjennom individuelle prosjektskildringer. Med utgangspunkt i presentasjoner av skisser til prosjektfremstilling blir feltarbeidet drøftet i seminer. I seminaret blir det arbeidet med utvikling av problemstillinger og forskingshypoteser i individuelle prosjekt. Med utgangspunkt i ulike antropologers presentasjoner av feltarbeidserfaringer blir praktiske og metodiske utfordringer ved feltarbeidet diskutert. Emnet gir også en orientering i personvern og i litteratursøking. 

Additional Courses in Social Anthropology

SANT201 / Teori- og faghistorie i sosialantropologi (BA)

SANT220 / Antropologi, intervensjon og utvikling (BA)

Interdisciplinary Courses

GDC08-08 / Global Reconfigurations of Poverty and the Public: Anthropological Perspectives and Ethnographic Challenges (PhD)

GLOB101 / Global utvikling (BA)

SAMPOL310 / The Global Poor: Discourses of Poverty and their Discontents (MA)

I was the leader of the international Master programme ’Anthropology of Development’ at the department in the period of 2004-2016, that recruited and brought together talented students from the global South and North. I developed the overall concept of the programme and many of the courses. I have also taught numerous courses on all levels (including PhD) at other universities where I have been within the discipline of anthropology but also beyond with interdisciplinary thematic across the humanities and social sciences. I have an extensive supervision record on MA and PhD levels.

Selected Publications

Manuscripts under Completion and Forthcoming Books 

Broch-Due, V. Belly and Universe: Turkana Pathways to the Regeneration of Life in Human,    

            Animal and Nature 

Broch-Due, V. Dislocation and Destitution in Colonial and Post-Colonial Kenya. 

            The Case of the Isiolo Turkana.

Broch-Due, V. The Social Burden of Beasts: The Progress and Regress of Commodification 

            in Turkanaland.1890-1990s 

Broch-Due, V  Place Versus Path: Reconfiguring Nomads to Fit the State. 

 Selected Articles in Journals and Anthologies  

Broch-Due, V. 2019

“Poverty Contradictions: How the nexus of gender, sexuality, and primitivism shaped modernity, colonial encounters and contemporary inequalities”.

In McCallum, C.,Posocco, S. & Fotta, M. (eds.) The Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press (fall 2020)

Broch-Due, V. 2019

“Engendering Domestication: Notes on the History of Pastoralism in Lake Turkana Basin” Under review for publication.

Broch-Due, V & Bertelsen, B. 2016

“Violent Reverberations: An Introduction to our Trauma Scenarios” in Broch-Due, V & Bertelsen (Ibid). 

 Broch-Due, V. 2016

"Trauma, Violence, Memory: Reflections on the Bodily, the Self, the Sign and the Social". In Broch-Due & Bertelsen (ibid). 

Broch-Due, V & Ystanes, M. 2016 "Introducing Ethnographies of Trusting" in Broch-Due & Ystanes (ibid). 

Broch-Due, V. 2016

"The Puzzle of the Animal Witch: Intimacy, Trust and Sociality among Pastoral Turkana". Broch-Due & Ystanes (ibid). 

Broch-Due, V. 2016 

"Intimacy, Trust and the Social: Interdisciplinary Reflections".  (Ibid). 

Broch-Due, V. 2014

 "Egalitarian Imaginaries: Technologies of Templates, Novels and Mobile Phones". Invited paper for the Opening Conference on the ERC Egalitarian Project.

Broch-Due, V. 2012

 "Intimacy, Trust and the Social: Some Reflections", Conference Paper. 

Broch-Due, V. 2012

"Polis and Cosmopolis: An Uneasy Relation" introductory paper for the invited conference Cosmopolitanism,���ϳԹ���Դ. 

Broch-Due, V. 2011

"Animal In Mind: People, Cattle and Shared Nature on the African Savannah". Invited article for the digital forum/journal "On the Human" hosted an organized by the National Humanities Center, USA. 

Broch-Due, V. 2011

 "Forenklet fortelling om fattigdom". Hubro. Magasin for Universitetet i Bergen.

Broch-Due, V. 2010

“Bodies, Pots, Landscapes: Choreographies of Birth and Death in Turkana  Northern Kenya”. Invited Conference Presentation at Rutgers University, USA. Forthcoming Grosz, E. (ed.)  Affective Tendencies. Bodies, Pleasures, Sexualities.

Broch-Due, V. 2009

“In Praise of Complexity: Higher Education and the Real World”. Key Note Speech at annual conference for the Southern African – Nordic Centre (SANORD). 

Broch-Due, V; Coffman, J; Little, P;  Ntarangwi, M; Prazak, M;  & Shipton, P. 2009

“Insights into Kenya’s Post election Violence” in Beliefs and Values: Understanding the Global Implications of Human Nature. VOL 1 Biannual. 

Broch-Due, V; 2008

 “Marilyn Strathern”, in ����ø�ԲԲ��ٱ�ǰ���,&�Բ�����;Mortensen, E.; Egeland, C.; Gressgård, 

 R.; Holst, C.; Jegerstedt, K.; Rosland, S.; Sampson, K. (eds). 

Broch-Due, V; 2006

“Costruire significati dalla materia: percezioni del seso, del genere e dei corpitra i Turkana”, in Antropologia, Genere, Riproduzione: La construzione culturale della femminilita, Silvia Forni, Cecilia Pennacini, & Chiara Pussetti (eds.). Rome: Carocci editore. 

Broch-Due, V. 2005

 “Violence and Belonging: Ananlytical Reflections”  (Ibid)

Broch-Due, V.2004 

"Creation and the Multiple Female Body: Turkana Perspectives on Gender and Cosmos". Chapter in Moore, H,  Kaare & Sanders (eds.) Those Who Play with Fire: Gender, Fertility and Transformation in East and Southern Africa. London: Athlone Press

Broch-Due, V. 2000 

"The Fertility of Houses and Herds. Producing Kinship and Gender among Turkana Pastoralists" in Hodgson, D. (ed.) Rethinking Pastoralism: Gender, History and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist. Oxford & Athens: James Curry and Ohio University Press

Broch-Due, V. 2000

"A Proper Cultivation of  Peoples: The Colonial Reconfiguration of Pastoral tribes and Places in Kenya." In, Broch-Due, V. and Schroeder, R. Producing Nature and Poverty in Africa. Uppsala & Rutgers: The Nordic Africa Institute Press & Transaction Press 

Broch-Due, V. 2000

"Producing Poverty and Nature: An Introduction" (Ibid.)

Broch-Due, V. and Sanders, T. 1999 

"Rich Man, Poor Man, Administrator, Beast: The Politics of Impoverishment in Turkana, Kenya, 1890-1990". In Nomadic Peoples, Special edition: Social Change in Eastern Africa (Fratkin, E. and McCabe, T, eds.) 

Broch-Due, V. 1999

"Remembered Cattle, Forgotten People: The Morality of Exchange and the Exclusion  of the Turkana Poor" in Anderson, D. & Broch-Due, V.The Poor are Not Us: Poverty and Pastoralism in Eastern Africa.Oxford & Athens: James Curry & Ohio University Press.   

Broch-Due, V. &  Anderson, D.  1999 

"Poverty and the Pastoralist: Deconstructing Myths, Reconstruction Realities"  (Ibid.)

Broch-Due, V. 1996

“The ‘Poor’ and the ‘Primitive’ - Discursive and Social Transformations” Occasional Paper Series, No 5, Poverty & Prosperity Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute

Broch-Due, V. 1995 

Feminisering av Fattigdom" Seminar Proceedings, UNESCO & CROP. 

Broch-Due, V. 1995

"Poverty and Prosperity in Africa: Local and Global Perspectives". Occasional Paper Series, No.1, Poverty & Prosperity. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute

Broch-Due, V. 1995 

"Domestication Reconsidered: Towards a New Dialogue between WID  and Feminist Research" Occasional  Paper Series, No.3, Poverty & Prosperity, Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute 

Broch-Due, V.1995 

"Poverty Paradoxes: The Economy of Engendered Needs".Occasional Paper Series, No.4, Poverty & Prosperity,Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute

Broch-Due, V. 1993 

"Making Meaning Out  of Matter: Perceptions of Sex, Gender and Bodies among the Turkana" in Broch-Due, V., Rudie, I.,  and Bleie, T. (eds.), Carved Flesh/Cast Selves: Gendered Symbols and Social Practices. Oxford & Providence: Berg Press

Broch-Due, V. & Rudie, I.1993.

"Carved Flesh - Cast Selves: An Introduction”. (Ibid).

Broch-Due, V. 1991 

“Cattle are Companions, Goats are Gifts: Animal and People in Turkana Thought” in Paulsen, G. (ed.) From Water to World Making: Arid Lands and African Accounts. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute Press.

Broch-Due, V. 1990

“Livestock Speak Louder than Sweet Words: Changing Property and Gender Relations among the Turkana”. In,  Baxter, P.T.W, and Hogg, R. (eds.) Property, Poverty and People: Changing Rights in Property and The Problems of Pastoral Development Manchester: Manchester University Press

Broch-Due, V. 1989

“From Sameness to Difference in Women’s Lives. Some Suggestions for Improving the Relations between Women Oriented Aid and Feminist Research”. In Proceedings from Nordic Women’s Forum. Oslo.

Broch-Due, V, 1985 

“The Social Impact of the Turkana Fishery Project” in I. Bryceson (ed.) Fisheries Development. DUH,  Norway.

Ask, K. Bleie, T., and Broch-Due, V. 1985

             "Forskning på Kvinner eller Kjønnsrelasjoner?". In, Nytt om Kinneforskning. Oslo

Broch-Due, V., Garfield, E., and Langton, P.1981

"Women and Pastoral Development: Some Research Priorities for the Social Sciences". In Galaty, J.,Aronson,D., & Salzman,P (eds.)  The Future of Pastoral Peoples. Ottawa: International Development Research Center.

Thesis and Monographs

Broch-Due, V. 

The Bodies within the Body: Journeys in Turkana Thought and Practice. Dr. Philos. Dissertation, University of Bergen, Norway. 1990

Broch-Due, V. 

From Herds to Fish and from Fish to Food Aid: the Impact of Development on the Fishing Population along the Western Shores of Lake Turkana, Kenya. NORAD, Norway. 1985

Broch-Due, V. 

Women at the Backstage of Development: the Negative impact on Project Realization by Neglecting the Crucial Roles of Women as Producers and Providers. FAO, Rome, Italy. 1983

1983 Broch-Due, V., & Storås, F. 

'The Fields of the Foe'. Factors Constraining Agricultural Outputs and Farmers' Capacity for Participation. A Socio-Anthropological Case Study Of Household Economy among the Inhabitants on Katilu Irrigation Scheme. NORAD, Norway. 1983