Anders Norge Lauridsen
About Anders Norge Lauridsen
Social anthropologist (PhD) specialised in ritual and cosmology, Madagascar and Austronesia.
- PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg, 2017-2025
- JSPS Fellow, University of Tokyo, February-March 2024
- Visiting PhD student, Aarhus University, 2018
- MSc in Anthropology, Aarhus University, 2014-2016
- BA in History of Ideas and Anthropology, Aarhus University and Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2010-2014
PhD Project: The Living Papyrus: Ritual, Cosmology and Immanent Divinity among the Sihanaka of Madagascar (defended 9 May, 2025)
This thesis in historical anthropology of religion examines ritual and cosmology among the Sihanaka of Madagascar. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the rizicultural community of Anororo (2015–2022) and drawing on recent theoretical developments in the study of religion, it explores the immanentism of Sihanaka cosmology—how hasina, a divine power immanent to the cosmos, sustains life and underpins both social and agricultural prosperity. At the apex of the Sihanaka ritual cycle stands Feraomby, a communal ritual in which the royal hasina of the immortal ruler Ndrianampanjaka is renewed, sustaining fertility and abundance. As this ritual illustrates, hasina is an invisible yet workable substance—fundamentally unknowable, yet accumulated, preserved, and transmitted through the gathering of potent plants, shrine reconstruction and water aspersion. Comparable to Polynesian mana and Indonesian semangat, hasina does not belong to a transcendent otherworld; it is an immanent divinity embedded in the cosmos, differentiating into divinities (zanahary) and mediated through ritual practice. Offering the first comprehensive anthropological study of Sihanaka society in Western scholarship, this thesis addresses a significant gap in Malagasy studies. By tracing historical trajectories—from Austronesian antecedents to Indic, Islamic, and Christian influences, and the conquests and colonisation by Sakalava, Merina and the French—it reveals how Sihanaka traditions have continuously absorbed external elements while maintaining an immanentist framework. Engaging with the theory of immanentism and transcendentalism developed by Marshall Sahlins and Alan Strathern, it provides a rare ethnographic case of an enduring immanentist tradition that has persisted despite extensive exposure to transcendentalist influences.
Supervised by: Jörgen Hellman (University of Gothenburg), Anders Burman (University of Gothenburg), and Andreas Roepstorff (Aarhus University)
Research Interests
Thematic: cosmology, spirits, doubt, uncertainty, rituals, tradition, agency, empirical philosophy, ontology, epistemology, ethnicity, cultural translation, experimental anthropology
Regional: Madagascar, the Indian Ocean, the Austronesian world
Fieldwork Experience
- Anororo, Madagascar (four months in 2015, two months in 2016, two months in 2017, two weeks in 2018, six weeks in 2019, six weeks in 2022)
Teaching Experience
- Lectures and seminars in the courses “Anthropological Theory”, “The Global Politics of Heritage”, and “Global Studies: Key Concepts”, University of Gothenburg, 2019-2020
- "Qualitative Methods", BA Minor in Sociology, Aarhus University, April 3-13, 2018
- "Ethnographic Methodology and Field Preparation", MA in Anthropology, Aarhus University, Guest Lecture on Experimental Approaches, March 5, 2018
Conference and Seminar Presentations
- "Strata of History: Exploring Shrines and Fertility Rites in Antsihanaka", Madagascar Workshop, Columbia/Sorbonne, Paris, November 14, 2024
- "Ambalavelona: Notorious Bewitchment in Madagascar", SANT 2024: The annual conference of the Swedish Anthropological Association, Uppsala University, April 24, 2024
- "Anthropology of Madagascar", seminar at the University of Tokyo, February 27, 2024
- "Ambalavelona - Rumours of Madness, Hysteria, and Possession in Madagascar", AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting, Toronto, November 16, 2023
- "Sihanaka Slavers and the Export of Slaves from the Ports North-western Madagascar", First Conference of the IOWC Network for Slavery, Bondage, and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World, McGill University in Montreal/Online, May 24, 2023
- "Cosmic Power in Madagascar", SANT 2023: The annual conference of the Swedish Anthropological Association, the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, April 29, 2023
- "Malagassiske Ånder og en Død Fremmedkonge", Center for Samtidsreligion, Aarhus University, March 23, 2021
- "The Narrative Experiment: An Experimental Approach to Malagasy Spirits", Mayday - Experiments and Experimentality in Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Studies, May 15-16, 2018, Lomonosov Moscow State University
Other Anthropological Projects
- Ethnographic objects collected for Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus: two mohara amulets, a lambahoany cloth, a fototra tomb pole and a complete spirit medium garb
- Visualising Anthropological Imaginations: An experiment in which illustrators turn anthropological concepts into works of art. Link to the VAI experiment