WARFUN Podcast

In this episode, Heidi Mogstad and Thomas Randrup Pedersen discuss anthropological attitudes to research on the military and some of the ethical and methodological complexities of studying and writing about soldiers and warfare. Pedersen shares experiences from his fieldwork with combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and reflects on his turn to existential anthropology. Mogstad and Pedersen also discuss some of their overlapping findings, including soldierly tropes of adventure, fun and post-war growth.

Thomas Randrup Pedersen Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the Royal Danish Defence College.

Heidi Mogstad is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Christian Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.  

This episode first traces how public perceptions of soldiers have changed over time, including the recent reappraisal of the status of the armed forces in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The episode also sheds light on how soldiers experience civil-military relations. Against this background, the conversation revolves around German society’s relation to war. The conversation then digs into ostensibly contrasting realms of soldier experience. It addresses mechanisms to deal with fighting and killing and reveals the unexpected omnipresence of humor in soldier life.  

Maren Tomforde is an anthropologist and the Head of Global International Relations at the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College. Maren is also a Professor at Macquarie University in Sydney.  

Eva Johais is a Post Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.   

In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Elissa Mailänder talk about Elissa's research of soldier amateur photography, particularly during the Second World War. The focus of their conversation is what can be discovered about soldiers and the ways they had fun through these seemingly banal tokens of war.

Elissa Mailänder is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at Sciences Po in Paris. She is an expert on violence, gender and sexuality; material culture; and the history of everyday life. In her research to date, she has primarily focused on 20th century Germany and Austria.

Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.

In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Jana Dolečki discuss theatre in the context of the disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Wars. The conversation focuses on the theatrical performances of the so-called frontline theaters and in the theaters outside war zones (in Zagreb and Belgrade). In the second part of the conversation, they consider some more general claims about theatre and its merits in the times of war.

Jana Dolečki is a theatrologist, journalist and a conductor of two choirs in Vienna.

Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.

In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Sven Milekić talk about the activities of Croatian veterans of the 1990s conflict active in veterans’ associations. The conversation focuses on the veterans' strategies of self-presentation to the public and instances where the observer can glimpse pleasure despite their emphasis on severity and sacrifice.

Sven Milekić is a Doctoral candidate enrolled in the PhD programme at the Department of History at Maynooth University as recipient of the Irish Research Council’s Andrew Grene Post-Conflict Reconciliation Scholarship.

Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.

In this episode, Heidi Mogstad talks to Jethro Norman about his ethnographic research with European veterans working and living as private military and security contractors in East Africa. Jethro argues for the importance of taking seriously the voices and experiences of veterans and ‘mercenaries’, including their attachments to and critiques of their own societies, the military, and national and colonial history. He also unsettles conventional ideas and stereotypes about contractors, war, and international green zones. Finally, Heidi challenges Jethro to reflect on the pleasures and discomfort he experienced during his novel and volatile fieldwork.

Jethro Norman is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. His current research project explores the political and humanitarian impact of Somali diaspora groups, from the perspective of communities within Somalia. He is also writing a book based on his PhD, which was an ethnographic study of former European soldiers working and living in East Africa as private military and security contractors.

Heidi Mogstad is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.

In this episode, Iva Jelušić and Meredith Lair talk about the life of the US soldiers in army bases during the Vietnam War. The conversation first focuses on some of the findings from Lair’s book Armed with Abundance: Consumerism and Soldiering in the Vietnam War (2011), which examines the non-combat experiences of American soldiers in Vietnam. The second part of the conversation brings to the fore her current research, including soldier photography during the same war.

Meredith Lair is an Associate Professor of History at George Mason University, where she directs the interdisciplinary studies graduate program, and is an expert on the Vietnam War.

Iva Jelušić is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.

In this episode, Eva Johais and Catherine Lutz discuss whether we can and should study fun in the context of war. This means dealing with moral and conceptual questions of conducting research on war. Why does Catherine Lutz call for “decentering the battlefield”? How can our own moralities inhibit our understanding of war as a central phenomenon in the contemporary world? And what forms of pleasure do people feel when they go to war?

During this conversation, the concept of war is also linked to the idea of spectacle, which reveals how war resembles other forms of human experience like sports and how we all participate in war.

Catherine Lutz is Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, she co-directs the “Costs of War” project at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

Eva Johais is a Post Doctoral Researcher for the “War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience” project at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway.