Eriksen, Thomas Hylland

Geir Thomas Hylland Eriksen (6 February 1962 – 27 November 2024) was a Norwegian anthropologist known for his scholarly and popular writing on globalization, culture, identity, ethnicity, and nationalism. He was Professor of Social Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has previously served as the President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (2015–2016), as well as the Editor of Samtiden (1993–2001), Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift (1993–1997), the Journal of Peace Research, and Ethnos. He was an honorary member of the Royal Anthropological Institute and an external scientific member of the Max Planck Society. Hylland Eriksen was among the most prolific and highly cited anthropologists of his generation—at the time of his death, he had authored or co-authored approximately sixty book and hundreds of articles, essays, and book chapters. He was recognized for his remarkable success in bringing an anthropological perspective to a broader, non-academic audience. In Norway, Hylland Eriksen was a well-known public intellectual whose advocacy of diversity and cultural pluralism earned both praise and scorn. Right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, cited Eriksen critically in his manifesto and during his 2012 trial. In academia and beyond, Hylland Eriksen was highly decorated for his scholarship. He was the recipient of honorary degrees from Stockholm University (2011), the University of Copenhagen (2021), and Charles University in Prague (2021), as well as one of anthropology's most prestigious honors, the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography's Gold Medal (2022). He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.