Academic interests
Health and Environment
More-Than-Human Health: People, Plants, Fungi, Animals, Microbes
Anthropology of Food and Agriculture
Anthropology of Mental Health / Critical Suicide Studies
Anthropology of Drugs and Drug Use
Toxicity/Pollution/Pesticides; Chemical Ethnography
Disease Ecologies and Climate
Soil, Land, Landscape
Medical Pluralism; Traditional Medicine; Alternative Medicine
Postcolonial Science Studies
South Asia; Norway; Germany
About
Daniel Münster's research is located at the intersection of medical and environmental anthropology. Drawing on ethnography and historical anthropology, he studies power, health, and ecology in the contemporary world. He has focused his work on rural communities in the Global South. Daniel's ethnographic work with smallholder farmers explores the possibilities for an alternative agriculture based on decolonial and ecological understandings of people and their non-human others, including plants, animals, microbes and soils.
Writing on such issues as farmer suicides, pesticide use, food scares, landscape changes, fermentation, and alternative agriculture, he studies the possibilities for health and recuperation for people and their environments in a world threatened by ecological destruction and political-economic crises. Combining interdisciplinary theorizing from the fields of science and technology studies, multispecies studies, and political ecology with empirically grounded studies of rural communities, Daniel explores a variety of crucial topics in medical anthropology, such as suicide and mental health, biopolitics, toxicity and environmental poisons, drugs and drug use, more-than-human health, and planetary health.
Courses taught
INTHE4019 – Fundamentals of International Community Health
- Drugs, Pharmaceuticals, Medicines (thematic week)
- Health and the Environment (thematic week)
HELSEF4410 – Introduction to Qualitative Methods
INTHE4113 – Introduction to Medical Anthropology
INTHE4022 – Advanced Module in Qualitative Methods (course leader)
HES9280 – Medical Anthropology: Current themes and theories
MF9140 – Qualitative research methods
MF9295 – Global Health
MED1100: Medical School, Modul 1
MED4500R: Medical School, Modul 5
MED5700: Medical School, Modul 7
ESH4100 – Education for Sustainable Health
Background
Daniel Münster received his MA and PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from LMU Munich (2005) and his Habilitation (2019) from Heidelberg University, Germany. 2013-2018 he was leader of the Junior Research Group “Agrarian Alternatives: Agrarian Crisis, Global Concerns and the Contested Agro-Ecological Futures in South Asia” at the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" at Heidelberg University. Prior to coming to the University of Oslo, Daniel has taught medical anthropology at Bielefeld University (2005-2007), Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (2007-2013), Heidelberg University (2013-2018), the University of Cologne (2019), and Bremen University (2019-2020). Daniel joined the Institute of Health and Society as Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology in June 2020.