Mette Halskov Hansen is Professor of China Studies. She has been a student of China since she first went there in 1986, and has done extensive fieldwork there ever since, mainly in rural areas of Yunnan, Gansu and Zhejiang Provinces. She has published about ethnic minority education, processes of individualization in schools and society at large, migrations to border regions, human and political dimensions of air pollution, and spiritually inspired environmental activities in China and Taiwan. She is currently working on a co-authored monograph about the history of education in Chinese society since 1949.
Mette Halskov Hansen has held positions as Head of Department, Dean of Research, and Vice-rector at the University of Oslo, and she has been a member of a number academic boards including, for instance, the Norwegian Research Council, Lund University, PRIO, FNI, ISF. She has been visiting Professor in Chinese University of Hongkong, Academia Sinica Taiwan, Stanford University, and Zhejiang University, and the PI of several larger interdisciplinary projects supported by, among others, the Norwegian Research Council on the topics of individualization in China, air pollution in China, religion and ecological crisis in Asia.
Teaching includes BA and MA courses on Chinese society and politics, Chinese education, Methodologies and Theories in China Studies, Approaches to environmental challenges in China, etc. She has supervised a larger number of MA and PhD students since the mid-1990s.
