Guest researcher: Nina Kramp

Tell us a little about yourself?

"My name is Nina Kramp, and I am a visiting PhD student at the School of Global Studies from February to April. I am based at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and affiliated with University College Copenhagen, where I work with early childhood education and care as well as teacher and nursing education programs. Before starting my PhD, I worked for thirteen years as a schoolteacher in Danish public schools. 

I live in Copenhagen with my family. At the moment, much of my time is devoted to my research, and I especially value the small moments I get when cycling through the city, or when taking my kids to the coast for a few hours of wind and open horizons."

What is your area of expertise?

"In Denmark, a vast majority of children spend their everyday lives in public institutions from a very young age, where “community” (in Danish 'fællesskab') is promoted as a core pedagogical ideal and widely spoken of by childcare and educational professionals across institutional contexts as a uniform phenomenon and self-evident good. However, based on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in a kindergarten, an after-school institution (SFO), and a public school in Copenhagen, and drawing on practice-oriented perspectives that emphasize how social phenomena are enacted through situated practices (Mol 2002, 2013; Nicolini 2012; Reckwitz 2002; Schatzki et al. 2005; Vogel 2016), my research shows how institutional practices oblige children to one another in multiple and at times conflicting ways. In doing so, these practices produce community as multiple institutional realities of co-existence, rather than a stable social phenomenon, despite the shared language professionals use to describe it." 

"This insight is particularly important at a time when community is increasingly presented as a political and pedagogical solution to concerns about children’s well-being and growing individualization in Danish society. However, if community is to function as more than a political slogan or a taken-for-granted pedagogical ideal, it is necessary to develop an empirically grounded understanding of community, how it is produced in practice, and what kinds of collective realities co-exist in the early years of children’s institutional lives."

What will you be working on during your time here at the School of Global Studies?

"During my time here, I will be writing the fifth and final article of my thesis and working on the overall framework that brings the five articles together into a coherent argument. It will be an intense period of writing, balanced with commuting between Gothenburg and my family in Copenhagen. At the same time, I very much hope to meet many of you during my stay—whether over a cup of coffee in the kitchen, in the corridor, or at a seminar or workshop. I’m really looking forward to being part of the academic environment here, even if it is for a short while."