Geir Thomas Hylland Eriksen (6 February 1962 – 27 November 2024) was a Norwegian anthropologist known for his scholarly and popular writing on globalization, identity, ethnicity, and nationalism. He was Professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has previously served as the President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (2015–2016), as well as the Editor of Samtiden (1993–2001), Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift (1993–1997), the Journal of Peace Research, and Ethnos. Hylland Eriksen was among the most prolific and highly cited anthropologists of his generation, and was recognized for his remarkable success in bringing an anthropological perspective to a broader, non-academic audience. In Norway, Hylland Eriksen was a well-known public intellectual whose advocacy of diversity and cultural pluralism earned both praise and scorn. Right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, cited Eriksen critically in his manifesto and during his 2012 trial. In academia and beyond, Hylland Eriksen was highly decorated for his scholarship. He was the recipient of honorary degrees from Stockholm University (2011), the University of Copenhagen (2021), and Charles University in Prague (2021), as well as one of anthropology's most prestigious honors, the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography's Gold Medal (2022). He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Early life and education

Hylland Eriksen was born on 6 February 1962 in Oslo. His parents were Ole Eriksen (1934–1979), a journalist, and Gerd Elisabeth Hylland (1935–2018), a teacher. The family moved to Nøtterøy when Ole Eriksen took a job in Tønsberg. Eriksen grew up in an intellectual environment, though he found Nøtterøy to be a conformist place and felt that he never had deep roots there. He was exposed to the wider world in part through traveling to Africa in connection with his father's work with UNESCO. Eriksen later remembered that as a young teenager his heroes were Alice Cooper and Charles Darwin. In anticipation of pursuing higher education, he took the examen artium in 1980. Hylland Eriksen matriculated at the University of Oslo in 1981 and studied philosophy, sociology, and social anthropology. He completed his undergraduate studies and graduated with a cand. mag. degree in 1984. He remained at Blindern to pursue a graduate degree in social anthropology. During this period, Hylland Eriksen was also active in Oslo's anarchist milieu. From 1982 to 1988, he was a member of the editorial board for Gateavisa, a radical counter-cultural publication founded in 1970 by the anarchist collective at Hjelmsgate 3. Eriksen was among Gateavisa 's most prolific writers, penning many of its articles under variations of his name, including "Thomas Hylland" and "Geir Hylland." In the late 1980s, he proposed that the publication be rechristened "Glasnost", which it was for 1987–1988. At Blindern, Hylland Eriksen's interests coalesced around questions of identity, ethnicity, and nationalism—themes he would explore ethnographically through fieldwork in Mauritius in 1986. He completed his cand.polit in 1987 with a thesis—published in 1988 as a book—on multi-ethnic nationalism called Communicating Cultural Difference and Identity: Ethnicity and Nationalism in Mauritius. In 1989, Eriksen completed additional fieldwork in Trinidad. Two years later, he defended his dissertation, Ethnicity and Two Nationalisms: Social Classifications and the Power of Ideology in Trinidad and Mauritius, and received his dr.polit.

Academic career

From 1990 to 1991, Hylland Eriksen was a research fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo. In 1991, he accepted a position as a Førsteamanuensis (equivalent to an Associate Professorship) in the department at the University of Oslo where he had completed his graduate studies. He published at a prodigious rate in both English and Norwegian on nationalism and identity in Trinidad and Mauritius, as well as culture and cultural diversity in contemporary Norway. In 1992, Hylland Eriksen was approached by Universitetsforlaget, a Norwegian academic publisher, about writing an introductory textbook for social anthropology students. The result, which appeared in 1993, was Små steder, store spørsmål—a text that in various languages (in English, Small Places, Large Issues) and through many editions has become one of the world's most widely-used introductions to anthropology. 1993 was also the year that Hylland Eriksen published Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. Written at the invitation of Richard Ashby Wilson, series editor at Pluto Press, the book has, like Small Places, Large Issues, passed through various editions and found a broad readership. It is Eriksen's most-cited work. Eriksen was promoted to Professor in 1995.

CULCOM and the Alna Project

Hylland Eriksen's interest in diversity and new patterns of cultural inclusion and exclusion would lead to his involvement in an award-winning, multi-year interdisciplinary initiative at the University of Oslo, Cultural Complexity in the new Norway (CULCOM). Hylland Eriksen served as CULCOM's Director from 2004 to its conclusion in 2010. During that time, CULCOM would bring together 120 people from five of the University of Oslo's faculties, and lead directly to the completion of 9 PhDs and 42 MAs, as well as several books and academic journal articles. Hylland Eriksen himself was directly involved with five of these CULCOM was awarded the University of Oslo's Research Communication Prize in 2010. Though CULCOM ended in 2010, it continued in a sense through a research project it helped launch—The Alna Project—in 2009. Funded by the Research Council of Norway, Hylland Eriksen and the Alna Project's interdisciplinary team, including journalist Elisabeth Eide, studied integration and belonging in Alna, a highly-diverse "satellite city" in Oslo's Grorud Valley. The project concluded in 2013.

Overheating

In 2015, Hylland Eriksen launched Overheating: The Three Crises of Globalization, a major project funded by the European Research Council. Focusing on environmental, economic, and cultural crises, Hylland Eriksen and his team conducted ethnographic fieldwork in various countries, including Australia, Peru, the Philippines, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Canada, the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Norway. In 2017, Hylland Eriksen received the University of Oslo Research Prize for his work on Overheating.

Politics

Hylland Eriksen has been a minor political candidate for the Norwegian Liberal Party. In the local election of 2011, he was a minor candidate for the Norwegian Green Party in Oslo. He was also a minor candidate for the Norwegian Green Party in the 2013 general election.

Death

Hylland Eriksen died on 27 November 2024, at the age of 62.

Works

Main works in English

In Norwegian