Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (born February 6, 1962) is a Norwegian anthropologist.

Eriksen finished his dr. polit. degree in 1991, and was made a professor in 1995, at the age of 33.

From 1993 to 2001 he was editor of the bimonthly cultural journal Samtiden.

A considerable portion of Eriksen's work has focused on popularizing social anthropology and conveying basic cultural relativism as well as criticism of Norwegian nationalism in the Norwegian public debate.

He has written the basic textbook used in the introductory courses in social anthropology at most Scandinavian universities.

The book, "Small Places -- Large Issues" in English, is also used in introductory courses in many other countries, and has been widely translated, as has his other major textbook, "Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives".

Eriksen is a frequent contributor of newspaper pieces in Scandinavia.

Between 2004 and 2010, Eriksen directed an interdisciplinary research programme, Cultural Complexity in the New Norway (CULCOM), at the University of Oslo.

In a programmatic statement, he said that a main goal was to "redraw the map of Norway" to make it fit the new transnational, complex and globalised realities.

A book which sums up the empirical results and theoretical perspectives resulting from CULCOM is Samfunn (Society, 2010).

One quote from Eriksen made in the context of his CULCOM involvement has become a focal point in the 1,500-page manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, as well as in Breivik's defence speech during his 2012 trial.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen has also been a frequently interviewed commentator of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, where he has also been called as a defence witness.

In 2011, Eriksen was awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council.

Under the heading "OVERHEATING", he directed research on three major crises of globalisation—economy/finance, environment/climate and identity/culture.

This project is both comparative and interdisciplinary.

In the local election of 2011, he was a minor candidate for the Norwegian Green Party in Oslo.

Starting in late 2012, it was completed in 2017.

Eriksen has been a minor political candidate for the Norwegian Liberal Party.

He was also a minor candidate for the Norwegian Green Party in the 2013 general election.

Eriksen is an honorary doctor at Stockholm University, of The University of Copenhagen and of the Charles University in Prague, a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science, an honorary member of the Royal Anthropological Institute and an External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society.

He is currently a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, as well as the 2015–2016 president of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.

He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Born in Oslo, Eriksen has done fieldwork in Trinidad and Mauritius, and later in Norway and Australia.

He is currently doing research on scale and globalisation in the Seychelles.

His fields of research include identity, nationalism, globalisation and identity politics.

He is the recipient of several awards for his popularisation of science, and received the University of Oslo Research Prize in 2017 and the Vega Medal in 2022.