Welcome, Kasper Friis Bavnbaek

On August 1, we welcomed Kasper Friis Bavnbæk, who as a research assistant will work with the municipalities' strategic village planning. 

Kasper is not a new face at SDU, as he has had his usual walk on SDU's campus in Esbjerg for the last five years, where he first studied a bachelor's degree Sociology and Cultural Analysis and then a master's degree in Cultural Sociology. In addition, he was an instructor in statistics for our sociology students. 

Kasper is already well into strategic village planning, as the subject was the starting point for his thesis. 

In the thesis, he examined whether the perception that planners of strategic village planning have of the rural areas is consistent with the perception held by the residents.

Through a discourse analysis, Kasper found that the notion of rural areas draws on several themes such as nature, agriculture, social life, history, economics and the rural as opposed to the city. Where village planners define rural areas on the basis of their shortcomings compared to cities, conversely, residents define their place of residence on the basis of what the cities lack, namely nature and community. The discourse that shapes the work of strategic village planning thus does not always agree with the residents' definition of rural areas. This thesis therefore recommends people who work with the strategic village planning to better recognize the discourse that prevails in the villages when planning viable villages.

Welcome - we look forward to the collaboration!