From Fanø to Europe, and into political theory
I grew up on the small island of Fanø off the Danish West Coast, and I still feel a deep connection to its nature, culture and people.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Fanø was home to a commercially thriving maritime culture. The seafaring islanders not only brought back riches and rich cultural practices (the still-thriving local folk music tradition is strongly influenced by Irish folk music, for example), but also a certain cosmopolitan openness towards the larger world, with which I strongly identify.
I have studied political theory at Oxford and in Frankfurt, and I see myself as having one leg in analytical political theory and another, firmly, in the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory.
As with so many of my generation, my political consciousness was forged in the heat of the post-9/11 War on Terror and the 2008 financial crisis. During those years, I not only travelled extensively across the US, the Middle East and Africa, but I also subsequently found myself in central political hotspots during the financial crisis and the eurozone debt crisis.
In 2006, I met devout Muslims in Yemen perplexed and enraged at why a Danish newspaper would publish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. I walked with protesters during the G20 meeting in London in 2009, demanding structural reform of the global financial system, and in demonstrations against EU austerity policies in Frankfurt am Main in 2012. In 2019, I brought my daughter to climate marches, witnessing Greta Thunberg’s call to global action from a stage before the Danish parliament.
For the last decade, I have been preoccupied with the attempt to make sense of the chaotic world that we have inherited - its multiple and acute crises, injustices and social pathologies, as well as its promise, its “cracks and fissures” (Adorno), its sources of hope. I work with the tools of political theory, philosophy, sociology and political economy, and, in particular, the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory.
I currently work at the Danish Board of Technology as a researcher and democratic engagement facilitator. Prior to this, I held a postdoctoral scholarship in SCRIPTS Cluster of Excellence: Contestations of the Liberal Script at Freie Universität Berlin and a postdoc in the Department of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, where I still teach political theory, sociology and political economy.
Since 2019, I have been a member of the board of directors of the Danish development NGO Oxfam IBIS - the Danish affiliate/member organisation of Oxfam - which works to fight inequality, end global poverty and empower human beings through humanitarian aid, transformative education and institutional reform.
