Mads Solberg

I use tools from anthropology and cognitive science to make sense of how humans interact with technology. I consider this work as a contribution to 'technoanthropology', a complementary project where anthropological insights – on the one hand – can inform the development and use of new technology, and where the technology – on the other – offers fresh perspectives on foundational issues in anthropology.

The Department of Social Anthropology is my alma mater, and I am fortunate to have an adjunct affiliation here through the ASMOG Collaborative Project, where I am engaged in an exciting case study of maritime onshoring.

My other work centers on technology in healthcare, through my work at the Department of Health Science in Aalesund at NTNU.

I am also interested in the epistemic and cognitive foundations of simulation-based education in healthcare (https://www.ntnu.no/ihb/prosim).

Another interest revolves around novel forms of collaboration with municipal healthcare (Universitetskommune Ålesund).

My recent book, A Cognitive Ethnography of Knowledge and Material Culture: Cognition, Experiment, and the Science of Salmon Lice, was awarded the 2021 Society for Anthropological Sciences Carol R. Ember Book Prize.

Other recent work can be found here: https://app.cristin.no/persons/show.jsf?id=45321 

Guiding framework

Naturalistic theories of cultural transmission and the toolkit of the cognitive sciences offer exciting avenues for research on how communities of practice create and use knowledge. In particular, I'm exploring how the framework of distributed cognition can help us understand the orchestration of coupled human-technological systems in healthcare, and the practices of the experimental life sciences.

This framework pushes cognitive science toward a view of cognition as a property of systems that are larger than isolated individuals. This extends the reach of cognition to encompass a wider cognitive ecology, which includes people’s interactions with each other, as well as their relationships with technology, and other material resources for thinking and action.

I consider rigorous anthropological research to be crucial for the development of cognitive science. One way anthropologists can capture the fine micro-details of multimodal interaction in activity systems, comprised of humans and their technology, is through systematic analysis of digital video (cognitive ethnography). 

Background

My PhD investigated knowledge-making and technological innovation in marine science, by studying how a group of molecular parasitologists designed and developed a novel experimental system to discover tools for managing salmon lice (a persistent threat to salmon farming in Norway). My alma mater is the University of Bergen.

From March 2017 to March 2018, I worked on improving the conditions for local democracy and citizen-participation through novel enabling technologies, in the five municipalities that will constitute the new Ålesund municipal government from 1.1.2020. This work was done in close collaboration with politicians, administrators, and municipal executives.

In 2012, I was as an advisor at the Data Protection Official for Research, at Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD). See: http://www.nsd.uib.no/nsd/english/index.html.

My masters degree from 2011 was on the management and politics of forest conservation through protected areas in post-war Lebanon. I did my first ethnographic fieldwork in Lebanon's Shouf Mountains.

Before entering academia, I trained as a chef's apprentice, and worked in the culinary arts for some years as a professional cook.