Thea Skaanes

Experience

• 

  Tidsskriftet Jordens Folk - udgivet af Dansk Etnografisk Forening

  -

  Editor

  Managing editor of the Autumn 2022 issue: Special issue on REGENERATION. Contact me if you are interested in joining the editorial team or write an article.Managing editor of the Autumn 2019 issue: Special issue on MEAT.Article: Kødkraft. En historie om køddeling fra feltarbejde blandt hadza i Tanzania. ("Meat potency: a fieldwork story about meat-sharing among the Hadza of Tanzania")

• 

  Nordic Culture Fund

  -

  Researcher

  'Our story' is an exploration of what a culture-historic museum for the Hadza would look like? How would it be organized - taking into account radical egalitarianism? How would it be funded? Should it be movable - as Hadza are semi-nomadic? The Hadza community and Nordic Culture Fund has given me the task to explore these initial questions.

• 

  Moesgaard Museum

  -

  Managing curator of the UNESCO collections

  Responsible for updating, re-conceptualizing, developing and promoting the UNESCO material collections.Strategic analysis, concept development, planning organisational change, participating in defining future priorities, organisational profile and 5-year vision paper.Planning ethnographic communication in relation to different target groups, experiental approach to new ways of communicating as an ethnographic museum.

• 

  Global City Aarhus

  -

  Project consultant
• 

  The National Museums of World Culture, Sweden

  -

  Curator
• 

  Human by Nature

  -

  I give lectures for associations, community houses, unions, corporations, educational institutions of all levels, and leaders' associations in Denmark. I have also been invited to give lectures abroad, most recently e.g. at University College London (postponed to 2022) and Universität zu Köln (Dec. 2019). My lectures touch on as diverse themes as:Hadza ritual, cosmology, and sharing practicesMaterial culture and museumsDarkness and rites of passageHow to do things differently? Widening the organizational and economic fieldRegeneration - inner and outer sustainabilityFuture workshop - learning the skills to know the futureAh, not to mention: Fidel Castro's Cuba and the intelligence system Vis mindre

  • Co-founder and Curator of the future

    -

  • Research Consultant

    -

  • Public lecturer

    -
• 

  Aarhus Universitet

  -

  PhD project

  PhD dissertation (2017): Cosmology Matters - Power Objects, Rituals, and Meat-sharing among the Hadza of Tanzania, Aarhus UniversityWords from the assessment committee:"In the course of participant-observation, the author underwent female initiation, observed and participated in esoteric rites, foraged for food, took photographs, made audio recordings, and acquired ethnographic artefacts. The dissertation focuses on Hazda religious, ritual, and cosmological complexity [...] Contributions of real importance made by the dissertation include thediscussion and analysis of material culture, the understanding of names in relation to kinship and to epeme dance, as well as extremely valuable interviews and narratives obtained from epeme men. The interviews concerning the eland presented in this thesis (and in Skaanes 2017) are ground-breaking in suggesting a Pan-African hunter-gatherer structure....This dissertation is an elegantly written exploration of Hadza ideas that is vitally necessary to dispel notions of Hadza simplicity. It helps us to recognise the sophistication of a society which maintains egalitarian relations, and the role of cosmology in doing that."As curator at Moesgaard Museum, I focused on belongings with specific attention to cosmology, taboos and rituals. I specifically examined efficacious objects, objects of power, and have worked in depth with the naricanda-stick, a’untenakwete-gourd and olanakwete-doll. These objects are material objects that have proven excellent portals for Hadza as well as for my research to enter the realms of forefathers, night dance rituals, and cosmology. During research, asking questions about these objects facilitated discussions to illuminate the cosmological constituents of human being. The PhD project has led to three fieldwork travels among the Hadza and during Autumn 2013 I had the pleasure of spending two months as honorary research fellow at the British Museum. Vis mindre

• 

  Aarhus Universitet

  -

  Hostile Terrain 94: A global participatory pop-up art installation by The Undocumented Migration Project and Jason de Leon. Curator for the exhibition at Vandrehallen, Aarhus University. Opening on 17 September 2021.

  • Postdoctoral Scholar

    -

  • Curator

    -