Regnar Albaek Kristensen
PhD in anthropology from the University of Copenhagen.
Regnar has worked the last two decades in the cross-field between religion, poverty, migration, and crime in Latin America and Europe. First as Associate Expert (2002-2005) in the Regional Office of the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) in Mexico City, and later through his doctoral and postdoctoral research at the University of Copenhagen and now as a Maria Zambrano fellow researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
In his PhD he followed, on the one hand, the upsurge of the cult to La Santa Muerte, and on the order hand, two infamous archenemy gangs in Mexico City, whose members found together and established the cartel La Union in 2008. In his Postdoctoral research he returned to Mexico and followed a family living on the edge of life, law, and religion, while developing his “dogme” approach to ethnographic research and writing. He has published extensively on popular culture and crime.
Currently he is working with transnational labor migrants in Europe at the Autonomous University of Barcelona collaborating with the Grup de Recerca en Antropologia Fomental I Orientada (GRAFO) turning his interest from the social dynamics in illicit economies to those found in informal and formal marginalized economies.