Why did you choose to study Cand.merc. Market Anthropology?
For my Bachelors I studied Market and Management Anthropology. I heard about the program and was fairly intrigued by the ambition to make anthropology accessible as a tool to understand and alter the world, read not only distant cultures and countries, but also more present contexts of marketing and management, politics and international relations. I chose that program because I wanted to continue exploring this way of thinking and the theoretical approach inherent to the MMA idea.
How do you like the study environment at the campus?
In my experience our collegiality and student body at SDU is second to few. Throughout my undergraduate studies I have studied at universities in Paris and Senegal, let alone visited universities in England, Spain and the US, but nowhere I have experienced a student body so involved in social activities with fellow students, and engaged in variety of student organizations, debating fora, film clubs etc. I believe the Danish way and the SDU one of that in particular, is to create a positive and including environment amongst students that stretches beyond 9-17. This be academical as well social.
Even more particular to the MMA bachelor is that we are a fairly new program, and the fact that the program literally does not exist anywhere else in the world means that being an MMA is being one of kind. We have a common interest and task in explaining to the world, why the study of culture is an appropriate method to understand much of what goes on around us and we feel privileged to have leading researchers from the forefront of academia across the world, travelling to Odense to contribute to the MMA.
What would you like to say to someone who is interested in studying the same Master as yours?
You should be interested in understanding markets as seen through the eyes of an anthropologist. Be aware that this is by no means the prevalent view amongst most practitioners, (the more important..) but an approach deeply rooted in an understanding of markets as social constructions, far extending the mere monetary transaction, as something facilitating interaction between people in a broad sense. You should be interested in the world and in what makes people do, think and act like they do and you should be open to a multidisciplinary way of enquiring and acquiring the world.