Ole Johannes Kaland

Ole Johannes Kaland is a social anthropologist with a particular fascination for issues relating to sociocultural hierarchies, mobility, housing, urban development, migration, youth, family dynamics, learning, education, and Chinese regions of Asia. 

He holds a bachelors degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen (2008), and a Master in Migration and Diaspora Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (2009). Since finishing his phd in anthropology at the University of Sussex (2014), Ole Johannes has worked as an associate professor of Intercultural Studies at NLA University College in Bergen (2014-2022), and as a temporary lecturer of Social Anthropology at Brunel University in London (2015-2016).   

Ole Johannes' PhD research focused on the grounds on which the children of China’s internal migrant workers make existential choices regarding education and work. Based on ethnographic research with migrant youths in Shanghai, Anhui and Henan between 2010-2012 (and several subsequent trips to Shanghai in the years since), he has studied a range of questions regarding the Chinese welfare state, educational governance and pedagogies, civil society, processes of individualisation, youth culture, and aspirations.  

Still working for NLA University College, between 2018/2019 Ole Johannes concentrated on publishing works from his PhD project as a part-time visiting researcher in the anthropology department at the University of Bergen. In 2019, he became an affiliate researcher with the Urban Enclaving Futures research project. Funding from the University of Bergen's Seedmoney for China-related Research was granted for field research to be carried out in the autumn of 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic regulations has so far rendered that impossible.

Ole Johannes instead adapted by travelling to Taiwan and reorienting his research project for the Urban Enclaving Futures project there. Between November 2021 and February 2022 he was funded by a Taiwanese Huayu Enrichment Scholarship to improve his Mandarin at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan. From March till December 2022 he was funded by the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) as a 10-month Taiwan Fellow to do research on urban development and housing in Tainan city as linked with the Southern Taiwan Science Park (Nanke). As a Taiwan Fellow, Ole Johannes was affiliated with the Department of Taiwanese Literature, National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Tainan, and with the International Center for Cultural Studies (ICCS) at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) in Hsinchu. 

In the spring term of 2023, Ole Johannes will focus on three tasks. Firstly, working as a senior lecturer with the Department of Social Anthropology at UiB. Secondly, analyzing his data from his recent research in Taiwan and turning this into publications. Finally, he will prepare for another stint of fieldwork in the autumn of 2023 -- this time in Shanghai. Here, he will partially do research for the Urban Enclaving Futures Project, and partially do follow-up fieldwork for his past PhD project with the ultimate aim of turning his thesis into a book.