Bjørn Enge Bertelsen

A social anthropologist and work mainly on violence, state, memory and tradition within political anthropology in Southern Africa and Mozambique.

Bjørn Bertelsen is a social anthropologist and works mainly on Southern Africa and Mozambique. My research interests include the issues of violence, state, memory and tradition within political anthropology. Bertelsen did his PhD (2004-2009) on colonial and postcolonial politics, state formation and the traditional field in Mozambique. 

Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Dept. of social anthropology, UiB working on the project 'Social imaginaries of death, suffering and accumulation. Urban spaces of insecurity and poverty in Mozambique and Zimbabwe.' 

Together with Bruce Kapferer he edited an anthology entitled "Crisis of the state. War and social upheaval" (Berghahn Books, 2009, 2012 [paperback]). 

Bertelsen did his Master’s (Cand. Polit.) in Social anthropology at UiB with a thesis on "'Till the soil but do not touch the bones'. Memories of violence in Mozambican re-constructive practices" (2002). The thesis sought to explore the social impact and contemporary importance of violence related to Mozambique’s civil war from 1976/77 to 1992 as well as to identify post-conflict processes of dealing with such violence.