"I have gained respect for the fact that life can be lived in completely different ways. And what you might think of as 'the good life' or 'the happy life' can be something quite different," says Lotte Meinert from her office in scenic surroundings near Moesgård, where Department of Anthropology is based. Here, the 55-year-old professor has her home base surrounded by books and colourful portraits that testify to a life as a researcher with both a global outlook and cultural insight. On the table is "This Land Is Not For Sale", and among many other textbooks on the bookcase are "Time Work" and "Configuring Contagion". Three examples of the many publications Lotte Meinert has left her mark on, showing the wide span of her research. The first book is about the land conflicts that have arisen after the decades-long armed labour dispute in northern Uganda. The second book focuses on what people in different parts of the world "do" with time, and what consequences this has for life and well-being. The third book makes clear that epidemics do not spread evenly in populations or through random biological infection. The latter book provides a completely new understanding of how so-called biosocial factors are crucial to ensuring effective strategies for containing epidemics. As the books illustrate, Lotte Meinert's primary field of research is security and development in post-labour dispute areas and medical anthropology.

Her many anthropological research contributions to humanities safety and health research have provided numerous examples of how anthropology can provide new angles and new perspectives on various societal challenges. However, her interest in anthropology was aroused long before she could attach the word "anthropology" to the interest in "other people's social life and culture". An interest that was aroused when, as a child, she traveled with her parents to Aasiaat in the southwest corner of Disko Bay on Greenland's west coast, where the family lived for two years.

"I was ten years old at the time, and I sensed many of the tensions that existed between Danes and Greenlanders and also got an insight into colonial history. It sat both as a curiosity and mystery in me. And it has somehow lived on in me. Why do people do what they do? How can we understand each other across differences?"

Language is an important prerequisite for understanding

Since then, she pursued her interest in other people's social life and culture in many different directions, both during her time as a student of anthropology and later as a researcher. She has carried out field work in Indonesia and Kenya, but one country  in Southeast Africa, Uganda, has come to play a significant role in her research career. This is also reflected in the titles of the major research projects she has been involved in: "Changing Human Security in Uganda", "Trust and Land – Governing Transition in Northern Uganda" and "IMAGENU – Imagening Gender Futures in Uganda".

Her research group is currently investigating the reasons for the decline in marriages in Uganda focusing on how women enter new family constellations, as well as the social and economic consequences of this. In the first years of her research in Uganda, she carried out fieldwork in the capital, but just as her research areas have moved, she has also moved physically – away from the larger cities in Uganda. Today, her research takes place in the mountains near the border with Kenya and South Sudan, where the Ik minority live materially minimalist lives. This is also where one of many memorable moments in her research career originates.

"One evening at sunset, Komol showed me the old Ik sundial, which consisted of stones set in the ground. When he demonstrated the system, it became dizzyingly obvious how much human intelligence, creativity and experience was accumulated generation after generation that became that technology. And what importance time has for people! Now almost everyone keeps an eye on the time on mobile phones – what are the consequences? It was a very special moment, which stirred up many questions that I will never forget."

An experience that on a Wednesday morning in her office on Moesgård Allé may seem remote. But even though the experience is far away in both kilometers and time, it is still present in her thoughts. A dictaphone lies on the table and records our conversation 10,000 km away from the mountain area of Uganda, where the Ik minority lives. Here in the south of Aarhus, Lotte Meinert puts many things into words – including the importance of language.

"Language is an important prerequisite for understanding what is going on," says Lotte Meinert and explains that the Ik minority has a unique language that she is trying to learn. A language you can't learn about in books. A language without written language. A so-called tonal language. When she lived and researched in Kampala, they spoke Luganda. When she did fieldwork for her PhD, she learned to speak the Ateso, because although Uganda's official language is English, Uganda has about 40 languages.

Creates fertile ground for more equal research collaboration between the EU and Africa

But it's also important for her to use her own language to put into words what concerns her. One of her main concerns, and one she has worked hard for many years, is building partnerships with universities and institutions in Africa and creating more equal research partnerships between the EU and Africa.

It is sometimes necessary, she says, to look into the shadow of her profession with humility and ask: "What right do we from the Global North, the old colonial powers, have to continue to conduct research in the Global South? Could the cooperation be more reciprocal?"

Therefore, she has also worked continuously to educate early career researchers both from partner countries in and outside Europe. In 2023, she completed the large EU-funded programme ANTHUSIA with 16 PhDs, a network of four European universities and a wide range of African institutions. She has also used the experience gained from this to create fertile ground for more equal research collaboration between the EU and Africa, and the project has, among other things, enabled African partner universities to take a more central place in the EU.

To shift our understanding of the world together

There are certainly also differences in the good or happy life of a researcher, but in Lotte Meinert's case, it is, you sense, both rooted in your own academic tradition as an anthropologist, but also a strong focus on expanding our understanding of the world and culture through dialogue with others.

"Almost all the research I've been involved in has been capacity-building for universities in the South, Africa and here in Europe. By conducting joint research on topics that concern both parties, such as health, labour dispute, land, time, marriages and love, we contribute to reducing the inequality that also exists in the knowledge economy," she says.

Lotte Meinert has received the Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific Research 2024 for her major research contributions and global commitment.

About the Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific Research:

• AU's oldest science prize, awarded for the first time in 1958
• The prize is named after one of AU's founders, High Court Attorney Carl Holst-Knudsen 
• The prize is DKK 100,000.
• See previous recipients of the award