MIRIAM AURORA HAMMEREN PEDERSEN
Social anthropologist, writer, intersectional feminist, minority rights activist
Pronouns: They/them, she/her
Welcome to my homepage!
My name is Miriam, and I am a neurodivergent nonbinary transfemme. I was born in Oslo, Norway, in 1990, and I currently live in the city of my birth.
By training I am a social anthropologist, holding a PhD in anthropology from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, completed in 2020 under the supervision of Professor Francis B. Nyamnjoh. I lived in Cape Town for the entirety of my three-year PhD period. Furthermore, I hold an MPhil in social anthropology (2016, under the supervision of Professor Ingjerd Hoëm) and a BA in interdisciplinary development studies (2013), both from the University of Oslo. My main field of interest within anthropology is ethnic and racial relations, and especially the concept of Whiteness. I have done ethnographic fieldwork in Fiji, Norway, Romania, and South Africa.
In addition to my academic education, I am a professionally certified scuba diver (PADI Divemaster) with a current total of 218 logged dives in 10 different countries. My international experience also includes a year in the USA in 2002-2003, as well as six months in Kenya in 2009-2010, where I worked as a full-time volunteer mainly for a women's empowerment organisation.
I have been active in queer/trans communities and related scenes for a number of years and in various capacities, including as a national board member of the Norwegian Patient Organisation for Gender Incongruence (POGI / PKI) and a member of the Queer and Intersectional Committees of Neurodiversity Norway, and I have participated in reference groups for several projects related to LGBTQ+ topics. Since January 2021 I have been working full-time as an advisor for FRI, the Norwegian Organisation for Sexual and Gender Diversity.
Writing is a passion of mine, and I have a long list of publications to my name. From 2020 to 2022, I was a regular contributor and intermittent editor at the feminist blog collective Maddam. In 2022, I was acknowledged as the first openly transgender woman in Norway to publish a collection of poetry, En balansert debatt, although my understanding of my own gender identity has since expanded in a nonbinary direction.
I am a proponent of intersectional and trans-inclusive feminism, and a strong supporter of sex positivity and body positivity. Anti-racism is very important to me, and the cause of Norway's national minorities is particularly close to my heart. I proudly identify as Norwegian, Romani, and Forest Finn. I am a co-founder of the Forest Finn youth organisation Unge skogfinner i Norge / Norjan metsäsuomalaisnuoret, and in 2023-2024 I hosted the first-ever podcast series on Forest Finn topics, Skogfinske samtaler, available on Spotify. In 2024, I wrote and published what is probably the first-ever text in a revitalised form of the Forest Finn language, the poem Sanatuul/Ordvind.
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Some of my other passions and interests are history, genealogy, linguistics, music, and collectibles.
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MORE ABOUT ME
My most recent work experience
Appearances in podcasts and other media, modelling, etc.
My blog platform: Miriams potetåker
Proud Associate of Belle & Co since 2018
