Ola Gunhildrud Berta

Associate Professor
Department of Culture, Religion and Social Studies
Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Science
Campus Vestfold
I'm an anthropological generalist with special competence on religious, economic, and political life. Through three ethnographic fieldworks in the Marshall Islands in Oceania, I've researched community and state formation, leadership, work, craft, fisheries, colonial history, and reality politics.

Publications

Books

2026. Culturing Money: Double Movements in the Marshall Islands. Berghahn Books.

2023. with Tone Høgblad. Helt nært: En innføring i etnografisk metode. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

Articles

2025. “The legal life of anthropological theory: Limits to the ideal of being useful.” Critique of Anthropology, ahead of print.

2025. “Enduring Ascriptions of Dependence: Cultural Autonomy and Relational Interdependence in the Marshall Islands.” Antipode, 57(4): 1382-1401.

2025. with Aiste Klimašauskaitė, Paul Dees, Silvio Oscar Funtowicz, and Laura Elisabeth Drivdal (last author). “Science at the Secretariat of the International Seabed Authority: Post-normal science for recalibration of policy instruments.” Open Research Europe, 4, 252.

2025. “Culture or commerce? Craft as an ambiguous construction between culture and economy.” Journal of Cultural Economy, 18(1): 92-108.

2024. with Torill Sæterstad, Inger Johanne Tollnes, and Marit Bøe (first author). «Alle må med: Styreres erfaringer med å etablere og utvikle profesjonelle læringsfellesskap i barnehagen». Nordisk barnehageforskning, 21 (3): 340–359.

2026. “‘Because of the missionaries’: The Ambiguous Presence of Past Missionaries in the Present-Day Marshall Islands.” History and Anthropology, 35(1): 134–151.

2021. “From Arrival Stories to Origin Mythmaking: Missionaries in the Marshall Islands.” Ethnohistory, 68 (1): 53–75.

2020. with Elise Berman and Albious Latior: “COVID-19 and the Marshall Islands.” Oceania, 90(S1): 53–59.

2019. “Pastor, Politician, Entrepreneur, Chief: Leadership on the Epoon Atoll Today.” Anthropologica, 61(2): 240–250.

Publications in the Norwegian Research Information Repository