Research areas

Marie Kolling is an anthropologist and senior researcher. She engages in research dissemination through op-eds, podcasts, and public talks, and is a frequent commentator on Brazilian current affairs for Danish news since 2013. She was invited visiting professor at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, in 2024, and invited speaker at Oxford University, University of São Paulo, and University College London, among others. She undertakes policy work with public authorities on gender-sensitive policies, inequality, and Latin America.

Current research

Her current research project investigates the growing burden of debt among low-income families as a driver of inequality and economic deprivation in Latin America. The targeting of women in particular for unsecure lending is investigated through ethnographic research on women’s struggles over credit access and debt payments, as well as the financial sector’s credit assessment schemes based on algorithmic and AI driven technologies. It is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. 

Kolling’s research publications concern gender inequality, debt and digital finance, informal settlements and urban renewal, communal responses to violence and insecurity and mothers' grief.

More recently, she has also been investigating the effects of Women, Peace and Security policies that builds on resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council, focusing on the drafting and implementation of action plans in various contexts across Africa, in Denmark and Brazil.

Audio-visual productions

Her research explores audio-visual modes of dissemination through podcasts on fintech and inequality in Latin America and growing household debt. She has previously co-produced an ethnographic podcast, Cashlessness: A Look at Life on the Margins of a Digitalizing Economy (2019) and two bonus episodes for AnthroPod, the podcast of the Society for Cultural Anthropology. As part of her research on informal settlements and eviction, she produced an ethnographic film, De Andada [Moving] (2014).