I am an anthropologist and a PhD Candidate at the environmental humanities project "Gardening the Globe: Historicizing the Anthropocene through the production of socio-nature in Scandinavia, 1750-2020", led by professor Kyrre Kverndokk (cultural studies).

My PhD project "Performing wilderness: Tensions of muskox attraction and reindeer protection" explores human-muskox-reindeer relations in the Norwegian national park Dovrefjell-Sunndalsfjella and looks into how wilderness is staged and performed through practices of conservation, national park management, tourism, photography and wild reindeer hunting. 

The thesis addresses questions of belonging in the Norwegian mountains by examining tensions of human–muskox–reindeer relations and in the management of the national park. Through ethnographic fieldwork in the mountains of Dovrefjell between 2022-2024, I have followed everyday encounters between park managers, visitors, guides, muskoxen, and reindeer. Throughout the thesis, I examine how the management seek to balance protecting the red-listed wild reindeer, regulating and welcoming growing numbers of visitors, and mediating public fascination with the muskox – an introduced yet iconic species subject to high levels of control such as monitoring and culling. These competing priorities reveal ongoing negotiations over species hierarchies, ideas of purity and disturbance, and demonstrate how a park protected as “untouched nature” is nevertheless shaped by human interventions, cultural narratives, and careful regulations through trail planning, monitoring technologies and disciplining of both humans and animals. The muskox, in particular, both challenges and reinforces ideas about nativeness and authenticity, often overshadowing the more elusive reindeer despite its vulnerable status. In tracing these dynamics, the thesis reveals how wilderness is continually made and redefined in situ, shaped by global conservation concerns, local histories, growing pressures on nature, and Anthropocene anxieties of biodiversity loss.

I hold a MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen from 2014, where I wrote about national identity in Iceland with focus on understandings and meanings of landscape, nature and sense of place - focusing on the national park Thingvellir. 

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Lillevold, K. & Haarstad, H. (2019). The deep city: cultural heritage as a resource for sustainable local transformation, Local Environment, 24:4, s. 329-341

Lillevold, Karin (2014). “Visdom hører steder til”. En studie om landskap og stedliggjøring av islandskhet. Master’s thesis, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen.