People
Elżbieta Drążkiewicz - Lund University
Dr. Ela Drazkiewicz is an anthro-ethnologist and Associate Professor at Lund University, specializing in political, economic, and organizational anthropology. She leads the ERC-funded CONSPIRATIONS project on conflicts over conspiracy theories in Europe, as well as the NordForsk NORDREN project on Nordic disinformation preparedness, and the CHANSE REDACT project on digitalization and conspiracy theories. Her book Institutionalised Dreams: The Art of Managing Foreign Aid (2020) explores the moral economy of aid through research in Poland and South Sudan. Previously, she held positions at the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Maynooth University. She earned her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2012).
Eiríkur Bergmann - Bifrost University
Dr. Eirikur Bergmann is a Professor of Politics at Bifröst University in Iceland. His research examines the international intersections of nationalism, populism, and conspiracy theories. He also writes on European integration, Icelandic politics, and forms of democratic participation. He has published twelve scholarly books and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Bergmann has contributed to public discourse through long-standing political analysis and commentary engagement. In addition to his academic writing, he is the author of four novels published in Icelandic.
Hulda Þórisdóttir - University of Iceland
Dr. Hulda Þórisdóttir is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland, specializing in political psychology. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology from New York University in 2007 and has held positions at Princeton University and NYU Abu Dhabi. Her research examines political ideology, the emotional foundations of attitudes, and the role of fear and distrust in shaping political orientations and conspiracy beliefs. She has contributed to large-scale comparative surveys, highlighting links between conspiracy mentality and political extremes, and co-authored Conspiracy Theories and the Nordic Countries. She also co-leads the Icelandic National Election Studies.
Lisa Engström - Lund University
Lisa Engström is Associate Professor in Information Studies at Lund University. She leads the research project Crises and war preparedness for all? – Libraries as arenas for conversation circles on preparedness, in which she, together with colleagues, investigate the challenges and obstacles faced by vulnerable individuals in actively engaging in crisis and preparedness efforts. In addition, Lisa is currently, together with colleagues, investigating the democratic implications of framing MIL as a security issue and civic responsibility, specifically focusing on marginalized communities and their residents. She has also participated in the research project Public libraries in a changed political landscape – a democratic mission for a new era?, which examined the democratic role of public libraries in times of political polarisation. Furthermore, she has researched libraries’ role in civil defense efforts. Beyond her research activities, she is a board member of the Centre of preparedness and resilience (LUPREP) at Lund University and a core member of Humanities in war and conflict at the The Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology, Lund University.
Annastiina Kallius - University of Helsinki
Dr. Annastiina Kallius is a social anthropologist and a Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Her research combines anthropology and intellectual history to explore the crisis of liberalism in the European context, with a broader research interest in knowledge production, authoritarianism, law, and migration. Ethnographically, her work is anchored in the context of Hungary, where she has conducted research for more than a decade. She is also the Principal Investigator on a Kone Foundation-funded project on the legacy of the Counter-Enlightenment in European political thought, and the responsible researcher for Finland in NORDREN. She earned her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Helsinki in 2023.
Tereza Østbø Kuldova - Oslo Metropolitan University
Tereza Østbø Kuldova is a social anthropologist and Research Director at the Work Research Institute, Oslo Metropolitan University. Her work focuses lately on issues of security politics and management, privatization and pluralization of intelligence and policing, compliance and governance of crime and (hybrid) security threats. She is the author of, among others, Luxury and Corruption: Challenging the Anti-Corruption Consensus (co-authored with Jardar Østbø and Thomas Raymen, Bristol University Press, 2024), Compliance-Industrial Complex: The Operating System of a Pre-Crime Society (Palgrave, 2022), How Outlaws Win Friends and Influence People (Palgrave, 2019), Luxury Indian Fashion: A Social Critique (Bloomsbury, 2016), editor of Digital Technology, Algorithmic Governance and Workplace Democracy (with I.M. Hagen & A. Lloyd, Palgrave 2025) and Policing and Intelligence in the Global Big Data Era, vol.1 and vol. 2 (Palgrave, 2024, with H. O. I. Gundhus, Ch. T. Wathne). She has written extensively on topics ranging from fashion, design, aesthetics, branding, intellectual property rights, philanthropy, India, to outlaw motorcycle clubs, subcultures, organized crime, corruption and anti-corruption. She is currently leading an international project titled: Luxury, Corruption and Global Ethics: Towards a Critical Cultural Theory of the Moral Economy of Fraud and funded by The Research Council of Norway (FRIPRO Young Talents 313004), while participating in several other international projects. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Extreme Anthropology as well as of the Algorithmic Governance Research Network.
Sebastian Larsson - Swedish Defense University
Sebastian Larsson is an Associate Professor in War Studies at the Swedish Defence University. His research is situated in the fields of military sociology and critical military studies, and concerns the socio-political and societal dimensions of defence, intelligence, and military education. Larsson participates in the research project "Psychological defence in the 21st century: Distinguishing truth from threat" (Swedish Research Council, 2025-27). He is the founding co-editor of the ‘New Intelligence Studies’ book series at Routledge, and chairs the Swedish Defence University Critical War Studies research group.
Gudrun Rudningen - University of Oslo
Gudrun Rudningen is an anthropologist and Associate Professor in workplace studies at University of Oslo, Department of Education. Her research includes studies of knowledge and organisational learning, disinformation, digitalisation and AI, and collective creativity. Her research is mainly ethnographic and interdisciplinary with methods including action research, digital ethnography, and visual methods. She has done research in several Norwegian knowledge-intensive firms in both private and public sector, mainly Media organisations the last ten years. She has published in several anthologies, as well as journals. She has previously worked at Work Research Institute, OsloMet, and SINTEF Technology and Society.
Gudrun Rudningen - Department of Education
Olof Sundin - Lund University
Dr. Olof Sundin is a Professor of Information Studies at Lund University, Sweden. His research focuses on the contemporary configuration and control of digital information, including disinformation, and its social impact. In particular, he has studied search engines and their role in everyday life, as well as media and information literacy as forms of infrastructural meaning-making. He is leading the project RE-SEARCH (funded by the Swedish Research Council), which focuses on understanding the evolving landscape of information-seeking in schools within an increasingly AI-infused information infrastructure. He is also leading the project Who is the Expert (funded by Crafoord) which concerns how generative AI influnce expertise, evidence and trust in a datafied society. In 2024, he published in Swedish the book Källkritik: Människor, Teknik och Samhälle (Gleerups). He has also been the co-author of the books Invisible Search and Online Search Engines: The Ubiquity of Search in Everyday Life (Routledge, 2019) and Paradoxes of Media and Information Literacy: The Crisis of Information (Routledge, 2022).
Kristofer Rolf Söderström - Lund University
Kristofer Rolf Söderström's research explores how AI hallucinations and Large Language Models (LLMs) reshape our relationship with information and knowledge. He uses computational methods to study, for example, how users perceive bias in Google’s autocomplete functions in times of crisis or how they decide between using Google Search vs. ChatGPT for daily tasks. He is currently working on several projects, including Who is the Expert? (investigating Generative AI and expertise), ReSearch (AI in Swedish schools), and NORDREN (The Nordic Disinformation Resilience Network). These run alongside his primary postdoc project, Plug-and-play hallucinations in the crisis of information. He also serves on the steering committee for the Search Engines and Society Network (SEASON). In the past, he's explored the emergence of GPT-fabricated scientific papers in Google Scholar, and how "digital grey zones" emerge when people attempt to buy medicines online.
Camilla Stub Lundberg - Oslo Metropolitan University
Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv - The Arctic University of Norway
Kasper Grotle Rasmussen - University of Southern Denmark