PhD Courses in Denmark

PhD programme in Anthropology 

Date and time: 21 August 2026 from 9-12.

Much contemporary anthropological and ethnographic research is driven by a sense of social justice, and a desire to understand and critique structures and norms through which suffering, inequity, and injustice are sustained and produced. Many researchers thus aspire to create change in the world through the dissemination and uptake of their research into policy and practice. However, communicating qualitative knowledge to healthcare providers, policymakers, and so forth necessitates communicating beyond one’s own discipline, and successfully doing so can be challenging for several reasons. On the one hand, publishing conventions in the clinical and policy spheres, derived as they are from experimental research models and presuming positivist notions of rigor, are often deeply misaligned with ethnographic approaches. Moreover, anthropology and related fields often privileges writing that can be inaccessible to those who lack advanced training in social theory, and who are unfamiliar with the conceptually rich writing style that predominates in the social sciences. 

Taught by a medical anthropologist with extensive experience publishing in both anthropological and biomedical journals, this short course is aimed at PhD students within anthropology as well as related social science and humanities disciplines whose work involves communicating to biomedical/health science audience in one way or the other. Participants will be invited to think critically about the relationship between discipline-specific conventions of scholarly writing and communication, and the forms of knowledge that are sustained and (re)produced through research dissemination practices. We will examine some of the personal, epistemological, and pragmatic challenges inherent in producing and disseminating qualitative research for a clinical and policy-oriented audience, as well as ways of confronting and overcoming these challenges. Upon completion of the course, students will better understand the conceptual and ethical considerations that must be considered when communicating anthropological knowledge to these audiences, as well as a toolkit of strategies to help them succeed in doing so.

Course lecturer:
Kathleen Rice, ​Associate Professor, McGill University

Course organisers: 
Nanna Balle Mikkelsen, PhD student, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. 
Anne-Sophie Guernon, visiting student, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. 

Preparation:
Please come to class with an example of an article written by a researcher from anthropology or another social science or humanities discipline (it can be co-authored) that is published in a biomedical or health sciences journal and be prepared to explain what you like and/or don’t like about their approach to making anthropological knowledge accessible to a biomedical audience. Also please be prepared to briefly explain your own research, as well as the kinds of forums where you envision disseminating it.

Language: English

ECTS: 0.5 for participation incl. preparation

Max. numbers of participants: 12

Course fee: The PhD School at the Faculty of Social Sciences participates in Denmark’s national network for PhD courses. This course is free of charge for PhD students enrolled at a one of the participating PhD schools (PhD students enrolled at a Danish University, except from Copenhagen Business School). Other PhD students will be charged a course fee of DKK 1,200 per ECTS for participation in the course (PhD students enrolled at Copenhagen Business School or at a University outside Denmark).

Registration: Please register via the link in the box no later than 10 August 2026

Further information: For more information about the PhD course, please contact the PhD Administration (phd@hrsc.ku.dk).


Literature: 

Required Readings:
·         Kontos, P., & Grigorovich, A. (2018). " Sleight of Hand" or" Selling Our Soul"? Surviving and Thriving as Critical Qualitative Health Researchers in a Positivist World. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research (Vol. 19, No. 2).
·         Rice, K. (Forthcoming). “Writing anthropological and ethnographic research for biomedical audiences: challenges, opportunities, and ways forward.” In Martinez IL, Wentworth C, Crowder J, Eds. Navigating Anthropological Identities in the Health Sciences: Cultivating a successful interdisciplinary career (in press with Berghahn).
·         Buchbinder, M. (2022). Dirty work in medicine: understanding US physicians’ agency in contested medical practices. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 36(4), 534-551.Schultz, A., Smith, C., Johnson, M., Bryant, A., & Buchbinder, M. (2024). Impact of post-Dobbs abortion restrictions on maternal-fetal medicine physicians in the Southeast: a qualitative study. American journal of obstetrics & gynecology MFM, 6(7), 101387.
·         Sabbath, E. L., Arora, K. S., & Buchbinder, M. (2024). Supporting OB-GYNs in abortion-restrictive states—a playbook for institutions. JAMA, 332(8), 613-614.
·         Clark, A. M., & Thompson, D. R. (2016). Five tips for writing qualitative research in high-impact journals: Moving from# BMJnoQual. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 15 (1): 1-3.

Additional Readings (not required)
On Debates and Challenges of Communicating Anthropological Knowledge to Clinical/Biomed Audiences:
·         Greenhalgh, T., Annandale, E., Ashcroft, R., Barlow, J., Black, N., Bleakley, A., ... & Checkland, K. (2016). An open letter to The BMJ editors on qualitative research. BMJ, 352(i563).
·         Olsen, L. D. (2020). “We’d Rather Be Relevant than Theoretically Accurate”: The Translation and Commodification of Social Scientific Knowledge for Clinical Practice. Social Problems, 0: 1-17.
·          Further Examples of Dual (Anthro & Biomed) Publishing:
·         Hunt, L. M., Kreiner, M., & Brody, H. (2012). The changing of chronic illness management in primary care: a qualitative study of underlying influences and unintended outcomes. The Annals of Family Medicine, 10 (5), 452-460.
·         Kreiner, M. J., & Hunt, L. M. (2014). The pursuit of preventive care for chronic illness: turning healthy people into chronic patients. Sociology of health & illness, 36 (6), 870-884.
·         Buchbinder, M., Ojo, E., Knio, L., & Brassfield, E. R. (2018). Caregivers' Experiences with Medical Aid-In-Dying in Vermont: A Qualitative Study. Journal of pain and symptom management, 56(6), 936-943
·         Buchbinder, M. (2018). Choreographing death: A social phenomenology of medical aid‐in‐dying in the United States. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 32(4), 481-497.
·         Rice, K., & Williams, S. (2021). Women’s postpartum experiences in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 9(2), E556-E562.
·         Rice, K. (2023). Re‐centering Relationships: Obstetric Violence, Health Care Rationalities, and Pandemic Childbirth in Canada. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 37(1), 59-75.
·         Rice, K. (2023). Touching at Depth During the COVID-19 Pandemic: What Not Touching Babies Can Teach Us About How to Improve Healthcare. Ars Medica, 17(1), 1-13.