My research, which is situated within the ASYKNOW-project, explores how expert knowledge - about asylum seekers, institutions of migration and asylum, territories of origin - is mobilized, contested, and constituted through and within asylum litigation and governance in Denmark and Sweden. I conduct ethnographic fieldwork in order to understand the social phenomena surrounding the facilitation, countering and constitution of legal, cultural, medical, political and anthropological expert knowledge, as well as how these processes are constituted, mobilized and contested in and outside of judicial and quasi-judicial spaces in which asylum decisions are made. I am particularly interested in the role of affect and racialization in this. As part of my method, I immerse myself in the social, professional and cultural worlds of my interlocutors, and try to understand deeper contexts.

Throughout my fieldwork, I have followed and interviewed asylum legal counsels, judges, asylum seekers, representatives and litigating officers from the Danish Immigration Service and the Swedish Migration Agency, activists, producers of expert knowledge (healthcare professionals, priests, forensic scientists), employees of organizations working with and around asylum, as well as various volunteers from different organisations. I have observed asylum hearings in the Danish Refugee Appeals Board and the Swedish Migration Courts, observed in the Danish unit for Country of Origin Information and in various other organizations and arenas where expert knowledge about asylum seekers is used, produced and mobilized.

Prior to starting my PhD in Bergen, I carried out doctoral research at the University of Helsinki where I researched processes and counter-processes of white racial identity development in a Danish context.

Education:
Intercultural Encounters, M.A, University of Helsinki, Finland 2018-2020
Politics and International Relations, M.A (Honours), University of Aberdeen, Scotland 2014-2018

Blog: Navigating the physical and ethical aspects of accessing the Swedish Migration Court

Radio-interview: Shadow Society – zur Situation von Geflüchteten in Schweden und den Folgen der GEAS-Reform ("Shadow Society – on the situation of refugees in Sweden and the consequences of the CEAS reform)") (interview in English and German)

Conference presentations:

The European Association of Social Anthropologists: EASA biennial conference, Poznań, Poland, 21-24th of July 2026. Presented the paper "Embodying Suspicion: Atmospheres of Doubt in Swedish Asylum Appeal Hearings".

Nordic Migration Research biennial conference, Stockholm, Sweden, 12-14th of August 2026. Presented the paper "Making Gender Apartheid Legible: Expertise, Asylum, and the Politics of Recognition in Cases Involving Iranian Women in Denmark”.

• TA for the undergraduate course SANT105 "Politics, power and resistance". I have also lectured in this course, about power critical perspectives on antropological knowledge production
• Supervisor and examiner for SANT260 Bachelor's assignment (mainly supervising topics related to migration)
• Grading/assessing multiple undergraduate level courses

All teaching tasks are carried out at the the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen

Contested Knowledges in and through Asylum Litigation (ASYKNOW), 2023-2028. 

PI Dr. Marry-Anne Karlsen. Project members: Dr. Kari Anne K. Drangsland og Dr. Simon Roland Birkvad