Louise is a social anthropologist from Denmark working within the field of sustainable rural development. At Nordregio, she works with a range of topics related to the development of rural areas in the Nordic and Arctic context as green transition, digitalisation and rural policy.
Academic qualifications
MSc in Anthropology with the specialization Medical Anthropology and Glocal Ethnography, Aarhus University, Denmark
BSc in Anthropology with supplementary subject in Religion, Politics and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark
Languages
Danish
English
Swedish
Norwegian (working knowledge)
Louise Ormstrup Vestergård‘s spatial story
Years ago, when growing up, I spent a great deal of time in the family summerhouse at Limfjorden in a rural part of Denmark — picking blackberries, running in the forest and walking along the stone covered beach usually accompanied by a persisting hard Western wind. And as a result, I spent a great deal of time heating in front of the stove.
Years later, I found myself sitting in a temple in a small village in the Himalayas. I was participating in the preparations for a big Buddhist holiday coming up. My task was to help make a special kind of traditional cookie that would be distributed to all the guests coming from nearby villages. On the walls were the colourful pictures of for me unknown spirits, gods and demons and suddenly from the far corner of the temple, where the village teenage boys where gathered, the sound of Rihanna would fill the room from a telephone speaker. Something nobody but me seemed to notice.
Years later again, I was doing fieldwork for my master thesis in anthropology on the Faroe Islands. This time I found myself on a mountainside participating in gathering sheep for butchering and trying not to panic when I was given the responsibility to push a small group of sheep down towards the others. I managed and when all the sheep where gathered the prize was served: pancakes with brown sugar.
These are a few of the experiences that led me to where I am today: a social anthropologist working within the field of sustainable rural development.
Related Research
- Urban-rural flows of seasonal tourists – local planning challenges and strategies
- Health care and care with distance-spanning technologies, e-health and digitalisation
- Rural housing dilemmas: De-population and empty houses, as well as lack of housing
- Digitalisation in rural and sparsely populated areas – joint Nordic-Baltic learning
- Carbon Neutral Islands
- The Sustainable Hub to Engage in Rural Policies with Actors (SHERPA)
- SeMPER-Arctic – Sense Making, Place attachment and Extended networks as sources of Resilience in the Arctic
Related Publications
- Urban–rural flows from seasonal tourism and second homes: Planning challenges and strategies in the Nordics
- Digital Health Care and Social Care – Regional development impacts in the Nordic countries
- Rural perspectives on digital innovation: Experiences from small enterprises in the Nordic countries and Latvia
- Rural housing challenges in the Nordic region
- Compact cities trigger high use of second homes in the Nordic Region
