Rikke Sand Andersen

Forskningsområder

I am a medical anthropologist with a long-term interest in how bodies become sites of knowledge, governance, and lived experience within contemporary healthcare. My research has primarily focused on conventional biomedicine in Western societies, including cancer and family medicine. A particular focus has been the rise of early diagnosis and accelerated clinical pathways, and how these reshape bodily awareness and contribute to social inequalities in health. Together with Marie Louise Tørring and a group of PhD and postdoctoral researchers, I co-edited Cancer Entangled: Acceleration, Anticipation and the Danish State. In this work, we analyze how contemporary cancer diagnostics generate new forms of medical semiotics, expanding the range of signs through which bodies are interpreted and acted upon, and reconfiguring relations between public and private domains of care. We further conceptualize cancer symptoms as biosocial phenomena within a broader politics of anticipation, showing how bodily sensations are shaped not only by biology but by temporal regimes that call for vigilance and embodied attentions.

My current research interests revolve around global rise in solo living. Specifically, I am researching solo living as an embodied and relational condition, focusing on solitude as both vulnerability and potential. As more people live and age alone, everyday life unfolds without the assumed presence of a co-resident partner, reshaping experiences of illness, care, and responsibility. I am particularly interested in how shifting care obligations and what has been described as a “care crisis” in welfare states may intensify uncertainty while also fostering new forms of moral agency and relations. Rather than equating solitude with loneliness, my colleagues and I investigate how aloneness is lived, negotiated, and made meaningful in practice, and how it reconfigures the landscapes of care and kinship in contemporary welfare societies.  In addition to a series of international publications I have authored ALENE, tænkepauser, Aarhus Universitetsforlag and KRONISK ALENE - et spørgsmål om afmagt? Gads forlag (sept. 2026).

Teaching: My position is shared between the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), Department of Public Health, Research Unit for General Practice, and the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University (AU), where I teach across both institutions. I supervise master students, and currently my teaching includes electives in medical anthropology, an interdisciplinary summer school on health inequalities in welfare societies, and a large course on aging and gerontology. The latter two are developed in collaboration with colleagues from nutrition science, epigenetics, and clinical medicine, reflecting my commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration.

Currently I serve as a board member of the Danish Society for Health Anthropology and as co-director of the Health Research Programme at the School of Culture and Society, alongside Rasmus Dyring. I am also a member of the editorial board for the book series Transformations in Medical Anthropology (Palgrave Macmillan).