Mette Louise Berg
Departmental Lecturer, Anthropology of Migration
+44 (0)1865 274684
Mette Louise Berg is a departmental lecturer in anthropology of migration and is course director of the MSc in Migration Studies 2011-12.
Mette holds a Masters degree in anthropology from Copenhagen (1999) and a DPhil in social anthropology from Oxford (2004). She taught at the University of St Andrews 2004-07. She has carried out research on Cuba and the Cuban diaspora since 1998.
Her first fieldwork focused on the transformation of Old Havana, the colonial core of the Cuban capital, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This research focused on 'race', social marginalisation and narratives of Cubanness. Her doctoral research on the Cuban diaspora in Spain was based on multi-sited, transnational fieldwork (in Spain, Cuba and the US). Her doctoral thesis analysed the interplay between memory and politics among Cubans in Spain. The thesis was awarded the Royal Anthropological Institute Sutasoma Award 2003. Her book Diasporic Generations: Memory, Politics and Nation among Cubans in Spain was published by Berghahn Books in October 2011.
She has recently started new research on schooling and the reproduction of elites in socialist Cuba, funded by the John Fell OUP Research Fund.
Mette's research interests are: diasporas, migration and transnationalism; cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism; the politics of memory and generational dynamics; gender and subjectivity; ethnographic fieldwork methodologies; academic labour; Cuba.
Mette is a member of the Flows and Dynamics cluster and the Urban Change and Settlement cluster at COMPAS.
Mette is a native Danish speaker, and also speaks Spanish and German.
Selected Publications
Berg, Mette Louise. Ethnography, diversity and urban space. COMPAS blog post, 27 Sep 2011.
Berg, Mette Louise. Diasporic Generations: Memory, Politics and Nation among Cubans in Spain. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011.
Berg, Mette Louise. "Cubans in Spain: Transnational Connections and Memories" in Cuba in a Global Context: International Relations, Internationalism, and Transnationalism, edited by Catherine Krull. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2011 [in press].
Berg, Mette Louise. "Review Essay: 'Revolutionizing Romance: Interracial Couples in Contemporary Cuba', by Nadine T. Fernandez and 'Cuba in the Special Period: Culture and Ideology in the 1990s' by Ariana Hernandez-Reguant (Ed.)." Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 16, no. 1 (2011): 252-55.
Berg, Mette Louise, 2011. Digital Diasporas conference review. Anthropology Today 27 (2): 28
Mills, David & Berg, Mette Louise, 2010. Gender, Disembodiment and Vocation: Exploring the Unmentionables of British Academic Life. In: Paul Atkinson & Sara Delamont, eds. 2010. SAGE Qualitative Research Methods. London: SAGE Publications. Volume 4, pp. 107–130.
Berg, Mette Louise (2010), On the social ground beneath our feet: for a cosmopolitan anthropology. Social Anthropology / Anthropologie Sociale [Special issue on 'A Cosmpolitan Anthropology?' edited by Huon Wardle and Nigel Rapport] 18(4):433-440.
Mills, David and Berg, Mette Louise (2010) Gender, Disembodiment and Vocation: Exploring the Unmentionables of British Academic Life. Critique of Anthropology 30 (4): 331-353
Berg, Mette Louise, (2009) 'Homeland and Belonging among Cubans in Spain', Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 14 (2): 265-90.
Berg, Mette Louise, (2009) 'Reply to Comments’, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 14 (2): 297-99.
Berg, Mette Louise (2009) Between Cosmopolitanism and the National Slot: Cuba’s Diasporic Children of the Revolution. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power Vol 16(2): 129-56.
Berg, Mette Louise (2007) Memory, Politics and Diaspora: Cubans in Spain, in Andrea O’Reilly Herrera and Lourdes Gil (eds.) Cuba: Idea of a Nation Displaced, pp. 15-34. Albany: SUNY Press.
Berg, Mette Louise (2007) 'Cosmopolitisme et construction identitaire chez les "enfants de la revolution" cubaine' (translated from English by Hélène Arnaud), in Fariba Adelkhah and Jean-François Bayart (eds.) Voyages du développement: Èmigration, commerce, exil, pp. 337-66. Paris: Karthala