Mikkel Bunkenborg

Mikkel Bunkenborg

Associate Professor

Current research

I am currently engaged in a collaborative ethnographic project on food and morality in China. The project is called Moral Economies of Food in Contemporary China and it is financed by the Danish Council for Independent Research in the Humanities. For more information, see https://ccrs.ku.dk/research/centres-and-projects/moral-economies-of-food-in-contemporary-china/

Teaching

I teach and supervise in the field of Chinese language and contemporary Chinese society with a special focus on fieldwork, interviews and qualitative methods, and on the anthropological and ethnographic literature on China. 

 

Primary fields of research

I approach contemporary Chinese society and the sinophone world with ethnographic methods and take a particular interest in the following topics.

  • Bodies, health, and medicine
  • Religion, ritual, and politics in rural China
  • Chinese projects outside China proper and emerging relations of intimacy
  • Material things such as incense, infrastructure, and natural resources
  • Food and morality
  • Ethnographic methods and anthropological theory

Selected publications

  1. Published

    Collaborative Damage: An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Globalization

    Bunkenborg, Mikkel, Nielsen, M. & Pedersen, Morten Axel, 2022, Cornell University Press. 294 p.

    Research output: Book/ReportBookpeer-review

  2. Published

    Food Infrastructures and Technologies of Trust in Contemporary China

    Bunkenborg, Mikkel, 2022, The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Bruun, M. H., Wahlberg, A., Douglas-Jones, R., Hasse, C., Hoeyer, K., Brogård Kristensen, D. & Ross Winthereik, B. (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan, p. 703-720

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingBook chapterResearchpeer-review

  3. Published

    Borderline Gardening: Sino-Mongolian Relations and the Construction of Extractive Enclaves with Horticultural Characteristics

    Bunkenborg, Mikkel, 9 Dec 2021, In: Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies. 39, 2, p. 99-112 14 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  4. Published

    Moral Economies of Food in Contemporary China

    Bunkenborg, Mikkel & Hansen, A. S., 1 Dec 2020, In: Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. 48, 3, p. 243-261 19 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  5. Published

    Monumental Misunderstandings: The material entextualization of mutual incomprehension in Sino-Mozambican relations

    Nielsen, M. & Bunkenborg, Mikkel, 9 Oct 2020, In: Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology. 64, 3

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

  6. Published

    Natural Resource Extraction in the Interior: Scouts, spirits and Chinese loggers in the forests of northern Mozambique

    Nielsen, M. & Bunkenborg, Mikkel, 6 May 2020, In: Journal of Southern African Studies. 46, 3, p. 417-433 17 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

ID: 4885