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Pathways to Sustainable Eating: Fostering Sustainable Attunement through Commensality and Collective Culinary Creativity
(University of Iceland, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Sociology, Anthropology and Folkloristics, 2026) Viðarsdóttir, Auður; Valdimar Tr. Hafstein; Faculty of Sociology, Anthropology and Folkloristics (UI); Félagsfræði-, mannfræði- og þjóðfræðideild (HÍ); School of Social Sciences (UI); Félagsvísindasvið (HÍ)
Considerable improvements can be achieved for human and planetary health if everyday food practices are transformed into a sustainable direction, as industrial food systems account for one third of greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to ecosystem degradation. Although the food system is global in scope, changes at local and regional levels are significant to drive its transformation. This PhD dissertation explores the experiences of individuals who have adopted more sustainable or healthier diets (e.g., vegans, vegetarians, flexitarians, and more) in Iceland in recent years with the aim to generate insights to inform further research and policy toward more sustainable and healthier foodways in the country. The research was a part of the transdisciplinary project Sustainable Healthy Diets: Filling the Gaps and Paving the Way for a Sustainable Future, funded by Rannís through the Strategic Research and Development Program 2020–2023. Grounded in ethnology and folkloristics, the analysis emphasizes meaning-making processes in everyday life. The study employs ethnographic methods, including in-depth interviews, participant observation, and a qualitative questionnaire, to investigate the motivations, challenges, and practices associated with dietary transformations among people in Iceland. The dissertation is theoretically informed by more-than-human approaches that bridge the social sciences, humanities, and ecology, and frame eating as an active, embodied engagement that places humans in an ongoing, contingent relation with the world. The study’s findings contribute to research on sustainable dietary transformations, notably by shifting the focus from individual dietary changes to how food and eating can be actively employed to reform human–nature relations and build community. The study identifies creative tinkering as one of the main factors that facilitates and sustains a change toward more sustainable diets—a dynamic process in which new food habits gradually align with practitioners’ core values, bodily needs, and social and natural environments, constituting meaning-making through embodied relations with one’s own body, nature, and other living beings. The main hindering factor in maintaining a new diet, especially in the case of vegans, is the challenging social situations that alternative food practices can create, such as when new food values clash with family traditions or culinary heritage. However, creative tinkering reinforces people’s core values in such a way that it becomes easier for them to overcome and negotiate difficult social situations, share new food values, and maintain their kinship ties through repeated everyday commensality. New values thus become meaningful through human and more-than-human relations, demonstrating the transformative potential of eating as simultaneously a cultural and physiological process. In addition to situating commensality and kinship as relevant analytical tools within dietary sustainability research, the dissertation contributes two original concepts for further application and development in future research: sustainable attunement and collective culinary creativity. Sustainable attunement describes the iterative, embodied process of aligning new values with food habits, bodily needs, and social practices, including the emotional labor of navigating social frictions while remaining true to those values, all of which support the long-term maintenance of a new diet. Collective culinary creativity is a strategy for creating meaningful connections around food and sustainability in local contexts, enhancing the transformative potential of cooking and eating and effectively integrating ethnological methods into transdisciplinary research. Moreover, exploring food-related practices through the conceptual lens of time reveals that the values people build through social relationships often clash with the capitalist, dualistic logic that shapes the global food system and much modern knowledge production. Food’s relational role—as more than a commodity and a means to nurture human and more-thanhuman relations—is frequently undervalued within prevailing systems, which can hinder change as transformations become established largely through social ties. This mismatch must be critically examined to prevent undermining sustainable practices in everyday life. Lastly, this dissertation reflects on the role of ethnology in transdisciplinary research aimed at sustainable food transformations, arguing that ethnologists are particularly well suited to tackle complex socio-ecological challenges and engage with the inherent complexities and contradictions of dietary changes, ultimately facilitating sustainability transformations that treat everyday practices as sites of potential radical change.
Verk
Making Sense of Gender in Compulsory School Practices in Iceland
(University of Iceland, School of Education, Faculty of Philosophy, History and Archaeology, 2023-10) Þrastardóttir, Bergljót; Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson og Steinunn Helga Lárusdóttir; Faculty of Philosophy, History and Archaeology (UI); Deild heimspeki, sagnfræði og fornleifafræði (HÍ); School of Education (UI); Menntavísindasvið (HÍ)
The Act on Equal Status and Equal Rights Irrespective of Gender no. 150/2020 and the current national curriculum for compulsory school education in Iceland emphasise the promotion of gender equality and queer education. However, there are few signs of the enactment of these obligations at the compulsory school level, and research is lacking on the interplay of gender and education. I found this intriguing and decided that it was important to inquire about the gendered aspects of school practices at the compulsory school level, especially since Iceland has been internationally reported to be a feminist paradise. I chose to do the study presented in this thesis on how gender is manifested in school culture and practices in the upper grades of the compulsory school level (grades 8–10, age level 13–16) in one school. The study consists of one data set produced through ethnographic methods. Participant observations were conducted for three months, which gave the researcher an opportunity to interact closely in the field, producing deeper knowledge than before on how actors make sense of gender and how it is performed at the compulsory school level in Iceland. Students and school staff at the upper level of the school participated in group and individual interviews. Rich observational data and additional material was collected to acquire insights into the gendered practices and discourses in the school. This study contributes to and generates new knowledge on how the school and the culture define and (re)produce gender differences, particularly with regards to the available gender positions in schools. The thesis is a compilation of three articles. Article I explores gender dividing practices reflected in different school spaces. Article II explores how students’ gender performativity and conceptualisation of girls as drama supports binary understanding of gender. Article III presents girls claiming discursive space to be able to change the normative gender script in school. Together, these articles give insight into the gender aspects of compulsory school practices in Iceland. Main findings indicate that the school environment favoured dividing practices between boys and girls in both overt and subtle ways, with a relative lack of resistance to the persistent gender division. This was reflected in (cis)heteronormative understanding of gender and gender-based arrangement of different school spaces that reproduced binary gender relations. The understanding of gender categories in school settings had a vital role in positioning students based on their masculine or feminine performativity and reproduced the ideas reflected in societal discourse on gender and social media promoting stereotypical gendered performativity. Claiming discursive space to resist the normative gender script available to students was an individual effort which came with the risk of rejection. The findings further suggest that schools must do better and comply with their duties as to promote gender equality education instead of limiting available gender positions and, thus, students’ freedom to express fluid gender and sexual identities. Schools must also dismantle the myth of Iceland as a gender equal paradise since gender inequalities are still very prominent in schools and will go unnoticed if not addressed.
Verk
Animals on display in an Age of Extinction
(University of Iceland, School of Humanities, Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies, 2026) Kjartansdóttir, Katla; Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir; Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies (UI); Íslensku- og menningardeild (HÍ); School of Humanities (UI); Hugvísindasvið (HÍ)
The examination presented in this PhD dissertation unpacks the significant but changing role of animals, as living beings and in the forms of museum objects, souvenirs, and symbols. The main theoretical frameworks derive from crossdisciplinary, post-humanist perspectives, which have highlighted the agency and role of more-than-humans as important and valuable companion species. In line with these perspectives the aim throughout the dissertation is to draw forth the important role of more-than-humans (including animals and objects) as actants with their own cultural biographies and thing power. In this relation, particular attention is given to visual and material representations of the Atlantic puffin and the extinct great auk within the context of art, tourism and museums. The investigation reveals, for example, how the Atlantic puffin as a living animal, material object and visual symbol has increasingly been activated within the context of Arctic tourism in Iceland. Another aim of the dissertation is to shed light on how current human induced environmental challenges, such as climate change and animal extinction, have impacted and changed our human/more-than-human relations. Furthermore, how these changes are met and engaged with through visual and material representations within the context of art, tourism, and museums. The dissertation contributes to the emerging field of multi-species studies, across disciplines, which include animal studies, post-humanist studies and more-than-human studies. The four case studies shed light on the complexities, challenges, and politics of representing human/more-than-human entanglements in our present epoch, frequently described as the Age of Extinction. An epoch, which demands continual challenging of traditional, dualistic boundaries and divisions to raise fruitful discussions and, not least, to discover collective solutions. Throughout the dissertation museums, and other cultural spaces, are regarded as important arenas where discussions and critical reflections can take place on urgent dark ecological matters of our times, such as rapid animal extinction.
Verk
Spacetime from Operator Algebras
(2026-06-09) Mohan, Vyshnav; Thorlacius, Larus; Raunvísindadeild
Under suitable assumptions, geometric objects such as the spacetime metric and curvature tensor can be reconstructed from the algebra of operators of quantized matter fields in the limit of vanishing Newton's constant. In this framework, the full non-linear Einstein equations can be expressed in the language of operator algebras, extending Jacobson's derivation without invoking the area law for Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. These assumptions can then be used as a criterion for determining whether the semiclassical limit of a given quantum theory admits an emergent gravitational description. Going in the other direction, the discrete spectrum of a holographic theory at finite N can be modelled by adding non-perturbative corrections to semiclassical operator algebras. The type III von Neumann algebra that arises in the vanishing Newton's constant limit can be enlarged by adjoining its modular Hamiltonian. A random matrix theory completion of this enlarged algebra, followed by ensemble averaging, results in a type I von Neumann algebra whose minimal projectors approximate those of the underlying microstates. In the case of an eternal black hole, the dimension of the type I algebra equals the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy with universal logarithmic corrections. The complexity of probe operators in the boundary theory provides a diagnostic of the validity of the corresponding bulk semiclassical effective field theory.
Verk
A Novel Role of the MITF-A Isoform in Maintaining Genomic Stability
(University of Iceland, School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, 2026-03-04) Venkatesh, Thejus; Stefán Sigurðsson; Faculty of Medicine (UI); Læknadeild (HÍ); School of Health Sciences (UI); Heilbrigðisvísindasvið (HÍ)
The genome of all living cells is susceptible to various intra- and extracellular events that can compromise its stability. This genomic stability is crucial for the normal function of all cells, and failure to preserve genome integrity can lead to cancer and other diseases. In the event of DNA damage, cells activate the so-called DNA Damage Response to initiate DNA repair. Replication stress can also cause genomic instability. Replication stress interrupts the DNA replication process by stalling the active replication fork. If there is prolonged replication stress, it leads to genomic instability, which can result in DNA damage, chromosomal abnormalities, and mutations. MITF is a transcription factor best known for its roles in melanocyte biology and melanoma, but its function in genome maintenance remains incompletely understood. While most studies have focused on the MITF-M isoform, the roles of other isoforms remain largely unexplored. Interestingly, many non-melanocytic cells predominantly express the MITF-A isoform. Data presented in this project show that MITFA is expressed in most tissues, including cancer tissues, and may function as a genome maintenance protein. In this study, we use the osteosarcoma cell line U2OS to uncover the non-melanocyte-specific role of MITF. We found that MITF depletion leads to TP53 accumulation, P21 expression, increased 53BP1 nuclear bodies, and high fork speed, suggesting a protective role in S phase, thus maintaining genomic stability. Differentially expressed genes upon MITF-A isoform knockdown show downregulation of genes associated with DNA replication and DNA repair. Mass spectrometry reveals that MITF-A shows increased interaction with proteins involved in DNA replication and repair, including RPA and PARP1, compared to MITF-M. Notably, data from single-molecule C-trap optical tweezer experiments show that MITF-A, but not MITF-M, stably binds RPA-coated singlestranded DNA. Replication dynamics revealed that MITF-A depletion led to an increase in replication fork speed, which is associated with reduced PARylation. Collectively, this study highlights MITF-A’s role in DNA replication and in maintaining genomic stability.

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