Bagga Bjerge

Professor Bagga Bjerge

Small Group Project 2022-23

Observing, theorizing and coping with ‘nothing’ in ethnographic fieldwork

With Annika Lindberg & Mike Rowe & Tobias Eule

This project will engage with the awkwardness that appears when we observe, hear, and research nothing. In doing so, we will address the methodological, ethical and political challenges of ethnographic research and its limits. In focusing on activity, do we risk misrepresenting our fields of study? By excluding inactivity from our representations, do we fail to fully grasp the activities which we set out to study, the object of our study? We argue that these questions are significant as a tool for better understanding and contextualising the object of study, the activities intended for research.

More information

Areas of interest

Ethnography Social Anthropology Social Policy Organisational Studies Bureaucracy Poverty Social Work

Cohort

FG8

Biography

Bagga Bjerge is Associate Professor at the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research (CRF), Department of Psychology, Aarhus University. They hold a Mag. art. in Ethnography and Social Anthropology from Aarhus University (2004) and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Copenhagen (2009), and have been based at CRF since 2005. Their research and teaching spans policy studies, organisational studies, bureaucracy, drug and alcohol treatment, poverty, social work, and marginalised citizens, with a strong emphasis on qualitative and ethnographic methods. They are Head of Studies of the European Master of Alcohol and Drug Studies, Research Coordinator at CRF, and a member of the Academic Council at Aarhus BSS. They serve as Editor-in-Chief of Nordic Social Work Research and Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography, and have refereed for a wide range of journals in the fields of drug policy, social work, and medical anthropology.

Biographical details correct as of 20.04.26