Marianne Hedegaard

Marianne Hedegaard is an External Lecturer at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen, with additional affiliation to the Department of Political Science's Asian Dynamics initiative. An anthropologist specializing in therapeutic cultures, she conducts ethnographic research on mindfulness interventions in Danish workplaces and embodied practices in Indian contexts, bridging medical anthropology with studies of religion and corporate economies.

Her academic credentials include a 2020 PhD in Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies from the University of Copenhagen, a 2015 Cand.scient.anth in Anthropology, and a 2012 BA in Anthropology from the same institution. She also completed research exchanges at University College London (2018) and Université Paris-Diderot (2011).

Hedegaard's research investigates how mindfulness reshapes emotional subjectivity and labor in corporate settings, examining tensions between economic imperatives and therapeutic ideals. Her work on yoga practices in Rishikesh, India, explores ethical becoming among tourists, while her Danish fieldwork analyzes corporate mindfulness programs as sites where mental health, productivity, and spiritual values intersect. She contributes to debates on affective labor, therapeutic culture, and the anthropology of the body.

Her publications reveal consistent thematic threads: the commodification of mindfulness in workplaces, collaborative ethnographic methodologies, and Buddhism's role in mediating economic and spiritual values. These works demonstrate a trajectory from fieldwork techniques to corporate ethnography, emphasizing how therapeutic practices reconfigure moral economies and emotional labor within contemporary capitalism.

Hedegaard participated in the Buddhism, Business and Believers (BBB) project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark and Carlsberg Foundation, which examines business-Buddhism intersections. She also contributed to the UTOPIA collaborative fieldwork initiative, developing innovative methodologies for large-scale ethnographic research. Her teaching portfolio includes Culture and Social Analysis, Cultural Translation, and Organizational Anthropology in the Cross-Cultural Studies master's program.