Kirsten Hastrup

Kirsten Blinkenberg Hastrup (born 1948) is a Danish anthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She has taken a special interest in the conjunction between the history and culture of both Iceland and Greenland, publishing widely on both, while also examining the relationship between the theatre and anthropology. Hastrup was president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters from 2008 to 2016.

Biography Born on 20 February 1948 in Copenhagen, Hastrup is one of the five daughters of the physician Bent Faurschou Hastrup (1922–85) and his wife Else Blinkenberg, an educator. After matriculating from Aarhus Cathedral School in 1965, she studied geography and biology at Aarhus University. She went on to study ethnography at Copenhagen University, receiving an M.Sc. in 1973. The following year, she was awarded the university's gold medal for researching the woman's place in anthropology. In 1990, she was appointed professor at the University of Copenhagen where she continued her interest in theatre, arranging a large conference on theatre anthropology. In 1966, she travelled to England to research the history of the Shakespearean theatre tradition in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her interest in the relationship between human structures and the process of change resulted in her appointment as the first head of research at the Danish Centre for Human Rights in 1998.

More recently, from 2009 to 2014, Hastrup ran Waterworlds, a major European research project analysing social responses to climate change, followed by fieldwork in Greenland, where she researched the effects of the modern world on a small community of hunters.

Awards Hastrup has received a number of awards including: 2010: Ebbe Munck Award for her biography of the polar explorer Knud Rasmussen 2012: Gad Rausing Award for outstanding humanitarian research from the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities Hastrup is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

Selected works Hastrup has published some 40 books including: