Editorial

Storaas has since 1993 been based at the University Museum of Bergen. Before then he had positions at the department of Social Anthropology at UiB in between work for aid organizations in Sudan and East Africa, two years scholarship from Norwegian Research Council and a year as a visiting scholar at the Program for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.  

His anthropological research has mainly dealt with pastoralists and agro-pastoralists in Sudan, Kenya and Uganda. General anthropology, i.e. adaptation, economy, ethnicity and local politics, has been his main theme. 

As a filmmaker he has been involved in projects in Eastern and Southern Africa, in the Middle East, in Mexico and USA, in China and Nepal, on the Balkans and Greece and in Norway. A theme conveyed in most of these projects has been how cultural traditions and ideas influence everyday life of people. As a filmmaker he aims towards creating virtual meetings between the audiences and the people presented on the screen. “I want these meetings not only to communicate knowledge, but also to move spectators emotionally, involving them in an experience that may make a difference.”

A concern related to visual anthropology has been research on media, museology and communication.

Storaas has also been involved in research based on empirical material from Norway, such as fisheries and industrial societies in rural areas.

Trond Waage holds  PhD in social anthropoloyg, and has been a faculty member at the  Visual Anthropology programme at UiT-Arctic Univeristy of Norway since it started. He has conducted research in both Northern Norway and Northern Cameroon. In Norhtern Norway he has worked on costal communities on issues concerning youth and identity. In urban Cameroon has he explored the themes of urbanisation, ethnicity, gender and religion. Waage has also been involved in university collaboration programmes involving teaching Visual Anthropology at universiteis in Cameroon (Ngaoundéré and Maroua) and Mali (Bamako). 

Waage has made several anthropological films, among them 'Living with Boko Haram' (2016, with Mouazamou Ahmadou) and 'Mairuuwa - Masters of Water (2015). He has published several articles connected to the films he has made (2013, 2016, 2018 a, 2018b).