12 - The ‘bad’ anthropologist? A conversation with Thomas Randrup Pedersen about military anthropology and soldiering in the post-9/11 era.

In this episode, Heidi Mogstad and Thomas Randrup Pedersen discuss anthropological attitudes to research on the military and some of the ethical and methodological complexities of studying and writing about soldiers and warfare. Pedersen shares experiences from his fieldwork with combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and reflects on his turn to existential anthropology. Mogstad and Pedersen also discuss some of their overlapping findings, including soldierly tropes of adventure, fun and post-war growth. Thomas Randrup Pedersen Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Royal Danish Defence College. Heidi Mogstad is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.