I am incorrigibly eclectic when it comes to research – my academic interests span a wide range. Also I have more often than not tried to work across academic fields, making use of ideas and theories not only from my own discipline but also others, and collaborating with colleagues from various academic quarters. But, broadly speaking, most of my research falls into one of the following three categories (see list of publications):

• Regional and local development. Since my student years I have been doing research in this field. In New Zealand, where I completed a Masters degree, I participated in a project about the responses of farmers to radical economic restructuring. In Papua New Guinea, I studied social and environmental changes concomitant with increased market participation of subsistence farmers in my PhD research. And in Iceland I have looked at economic and social development in both fisheries-based localities and farming regions.
• Ideas of nature and landscape. This interest arose in connection with the difficult debates about energy resource development, that gathered pace late last century in Iceland, in tandem with increased tourism. Apart from delving into these Icelandic debates, I have looked at the development of national parks and other protected areas (in Papua New Guinea and Ghana as well as Iceland); the diverse meanings of the concept of landscape; the discourse about alien species; and the relations between humans and other animals.
• Planning and transportation. My interest in planning is relatively recent. It is for the most part centred on urban space – I live after all in Iceland‘s only city – but also stems from an almost nerdy interest in one of the most wondrous inventions of mankind: the bicycle. I have organised or taken part in some projects about urban bicycling and active transport in a more general sense.