Mette Louise Berg

Mette Louise Berg is a Lecturer in Anthropology of Migration at the University of Oxford, affiliated with the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). She holds a Masters degree from Copenhagen and a DPhil from St Antony's College, Oxford.

Her research focuses on:

• Anthropology of migration and diaspora studies
• Diversity as a conceptual framework replacing multiculturalism
• Transnational dimensions of migration and urban diversity
• Visual methods in social research
• Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to studying diversity

Dr. Berg approaches diversity research from her background in transnationalism and diaspora studies, arguing against purely neighborhood-based analyses. She emphasizes how visual methods can capture non-narrative aspects of social life like gestures and visual textures in diverse urban environments that traditional textual analysis misses. Her work critically examines diversity's relationship with neoliberal individualism and questions whether it enables political mobilization or encourages depoliticization.

Currently, she collaborates with COMPAS colleagues on London's Elephant & Castle area, analyzing 2011 UK census data while documenting urban transformation through professional photography. This research examines intersections between diversity markers (ethnicity, language, migration trajectory) and social variables like deprivation and occupational status in rapidly changing urban spaces.

She has edited a special issue of Identities journal (2013) with Ben Gidley and Nando Sigona, and co-organized Oxford conferences on Ethnography, Diversity and Urban Space, advocating for more globally inclusive and historically grounded diversity research beyond current Eurocentric tendencies.