Tom Bratrud holds a PhD in social anthropology from University of Oslo (2018) and has previously worked at the University of Oslo, the University of South-Eastern Norway, and as a visiting fellow at the University of Sydney. He has conducted long-term ethnographic research in Vanuatu and Norway.

His research in Vanuatu, based on fieldwork since 2010, focuses on the intersection of religion, morality, and the politics of land. This work has resulted in the monograph Fire on the Island: Fear, Hope and a Christian Revival in Vanuatu. The book examines a startling child-led Christian revival movement that developed on Ahamb Island in 2014 as a social and ethical reform in the wake of enduring political disputes. However, the movement took a dramatic turn when two men, accused of being sorcerers responsible for many of the community’s problems, were murdered. The book’s main theoretical contribution concerns how fear and hope are powerful sentiments that work together to become a potent driving force for change, but where the outcome can easily escape the initiators' control. Other publications include articles on climate change and the question of relocation, the complexity of turning social values into practice, negotiations of kin boundaries in contexts of scarcity, how rituals may become disruptive and problematic, and the special issue Dependence in Oceania (co-edited with Keir Martin and Ingjerd Hoëm).

His research in Norway, starting in 2020, builds on two projects: 
Digital Everyday Lives in Rural Norway (2021-24, part of Private Lives, funded by The Research Council of Norway) examines the digitalization of rural Norway, particularly new forms of urban-rural mobility, farming, and reality formation in enmeshed online/offline worlds. Local Communities and Part-Time Residents in Rural Norway (2020-21, funded by The Falkenberg Foundation) examines relations between rural communities, second-home owners and the second-home industry. Publications from this work include articles on migration to different 'times', identity curation through outdoor activities and social media, navigating quests for individual distinction and egalitarian relations, and the special issues Digital Sociality: Reconfiguring the Public and Private in the Nordics (co-edited with Karen Waltorp) and (The) Home With and After Gullestad (co-edited with Tuva Beyer Broch).

Bratrud is convening the European Association for Social Anthropologists’ Future Anthropologies Network with Kari Dahlgren.

SANT100: Invitation to Social Anthropology

SANT103: Materiality: Environment, Place and Economy

SANT102: Social Life in a Global Perspective

Books
2022. Fire on the Island: Fear, Hope and a Christian Revival in Vanuatu. Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800734647

2018. The Salvesen Ami Dance: Custom, Christianity and Cultural Creativity in South Malekula, Vanuatu. Oslo: The Kon-Tiki Museum.

Edited volumes
2024. [co-edited with Karen Waltorp] Digital Sociality: New Configurations of Public and Private in the Nordics. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 33(2).

2021. [co-edited with Keir Martin and Ingjerd Hoëm] Dependence in Oceania. Oceania 91(2).

2020. [co-edited with Tuva Beyer Broch] (The) Home in and after Gullestad. Norwegian Anthropological Journal 31(1-2).

Articles and book chapters
2025 (in press). The Invisible Material World: Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity, Sorcery and Revelations of Immanence in Vanuatu. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 15(3).

2025. The Future of Anthropology with Ubiquitous Digital Technology. Norwegian Anthropological Journal 36(1): 75-79. https://doi.org/10.18261/nat.36.1.9

2024. [co-authored with Karen Waltorp] Introduction: Digital Sociality across Public and Private Spheres. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 33(2): 1-24. https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2024.330202

2024. Reluctant Kings of the Mountain: Distinction and Inclusion through ‘Context Control’ in Digitalised Rural Norway. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 33(2): 127-144. https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2024.330208

2024. Climate Change in the Pacific and the Question of Relocation. Human Organization 83(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/00187259.2024.2336011.

2024. Becoming an Outdoors Person: Identity Transformation through Nature Activity and Social Media in Norway. In Simon K. Beames and Patrick T. Maher (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Mobile Technology, Social Media and the Outdoors. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003367536-19

2024. The Exurban Timespace: Spatiotemporal Decompression among Urban-Rural Migrants in Norway. In Astrid Marie Holand (ed.) Time in our Times: Stretching Contemporary Understandings of Time. Berlin: De Gruyter, 207-224. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111428970-009 

2024. [co-authored with Tuva Beyer Broch, Marianne E. Lien and Cecilia Salinas]  New Forms of Home Blindness: Rethinking Fieldwork Methods in Digitalized Environments. Ethnography 0(0): 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381241266924

2024. Pentecostalisation as Social Reform in Vanuatu: The Case of the 2014 Malekula Revival. In Marie Durand, Monika Stern & Eric Wittersheim (eds). Le Vanuatu dans tous ses états: Histoire et anthropologie. Paris: Presses de l'Inalco, 301-323.

2022. [co-authored with Thorgeir Kolshus] Frihetsbalansen. In Charlotte Lundgren (ed). Psykisk oppvekst: Barn og unges psykiske helse fra 0-25 år. Oslo: The Norwegian Council for Mental Health.

2021. What is Love? The Complex Relation between Values and Practice in Vanuatu. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 27(3): 461-477. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13546.

2021. Asserting Land, Estranging Kin: On Competing Relations of Dependence in Vanuatu. Oceania 91(2): 280-295. https://doi.org/10.1002/ocea.5305

2021. The Sorcerer as Folk Devil in Contemporary Melanesia. In Martin Demant Frederiksen & Ida Harboe Knudsen (eds.). Modern Folk Devils: Contemporary Constructions of Evil. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 47–61. https://doi.org/10.33134/HUP-13-3. 

2021. [co-authored with Marianne E. Lien] The Cabin, the Village and the City: Negotiating Belonging in Times of Crisis. Norwegian Anthropological Journal 32(2): 55-71. https://doi.org/10.18261/issn.1504-2898-2021-02-02. 

2020. Paradoxes of (In)security and Moral Regeneration in Vanuatu and Beyond. Journal of Extreme Anthropology 4(1): 177-197. https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.7395. 

2019. Ambiguity in a Charismatic Revival: Inverting Gender, Age and Power Relations in Vanuatu. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 87(4): 713-731. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2019.1696855.

2019. Fear and Hope in Vanuatu Pentecostalism. Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 65(1): 111-132. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26858307 

2019. [co-authored with Tihomir Rangelov and Julie Barbour] Ahamb (Malekula, Vanuatu) – Language Context. Language Documentation and Description 16(1): 86-126. https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd114

2017. Spiritual War: Revival, Child Prophecies, and a Battle over Sorcery in Vanuatu. In Knut M. Rio, Michelle MacCarthy & Ruy Blanes (eds). Pentecostalism and Witchcraft: Spiritual Warfare in Africa and Melanesia. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56068-7_9.

2013. Bisnis, Risriskure, Sociality: Melanesian Egality and Monetary Modernity on Ahamb, Vanuatu. Norwegian Anthropological Journal (24)2: 100-111. https://doi.org/10.18261/ISSN1504-2898-2013-02-03
 

Book reviews
2025. Lost in Digital Translations: Studies of Digital Resistance and Accomodation to the Welfare State in Practice (Ragnhild Fugletveit og Christian Sørhaug). Norwegian Anthropological Journal.

2024. Fijians in Transnational Pentecostal Networks (Karen Brison). Pacific Affairs 97(1).

2022. The Paliau Movement and Millenarianism in Melanesia (Theodore Schwartz and Michael French Smith) Journal of Pacific History 57(2): 543-545. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2022.2039843

2014. Foodways and Empathy: Relatedness in a Ramu River Society, Papua New Guinea (Anita von Poser). Anthropos 109(2): 733-734.

2021-24: Persistence and Change in Social Formations: Digital Everyday Lives in Rural Norway (SIKT project # 912121)

2023: Commoning and Privatization of Land in Norway and the South-Pacific (visiting scholar project, University of Sydney)

2020-22: Local Communities and Part-Time Residents in Rural Norway (SIKT project # 930504)