Kirsten Marie Raahauge is Associate Professor at The Danish Design School.

Kirsten Marie Raahauge applies anthropological perspectives to physical space. Her research spans in scope from Inca landscapes in the Andes, to Town Hall Square in Copenhagen, to affluent neighbourhoods in the Danish city of Århus. Through field studies involving participant observation and interviews she studies the reciprocal relationships between physical space (such as homes, residential neighbourhoods, cities or landscapes) and cultural uses and perceptions of space.

Kirsten Marie Raahauge has worked on several projects that focus on the intersection between culture and space. She has studied the effect that the design of residential neighbourhoods has on residents’ social interactions, and how landscape or urban formations such as hills or level ground, vegetation or sea view straight or winding streets affect the residents’ social life. She has also investigated museums’ function as public spaces that canonize specific types of art and display cultures through selected artifacts. In recent years, museums have become interactive public spaces that offer visitors hands-on experiences, thus opening up new dimensions in museums’ function as public space.

One of Kirsten Marie Raahauge’s current studies focuses on the relationship between artists’ works and the studio where the works are produced Another current project is haunted houses. Here, she studies instances of supernatural experiences and looks at the significance of haunted places in the way people perceive their experiences and try to come to terms with them.

Kirsten Marie Raahauge has taught anthropology and other topics of cultural analysis from bachelor to Ph.D. level in several Danish universities. At The Danish Design School she aims to strengthen the ties between the theoretical perspectives and the concrete design process. In addition, she wants to incorporate excursions to, e.g., museums, railway stations, and public parks to ground students’ understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of urban space.

Kirsten Marie Raahauge graduated with an M.Sc. (research degree) from the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen in 1993 and earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the Department of Architecture and Design, Aalborg University / Danish Building Research Institute, in 2006.