Monographs, edited books and journals
2024 “Digressions and the Human Imagination. Tracing the Indirectness of Cultural Creativity”. New York, Routledge.
2022 “Collaborative Damage. An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Gobalization”. Ithaca & London, Cornell University Press. (with Mikkel Bunkenborg and Morten Axel Pedersen).
2018 "The Composition of Anthropology. How Anthropological Texts Are Written”. London, Routledge. (edited with Nigel Rapport).
2016 “Urban Times”. Special issue of Ethnos 82(3).
2013 “Time and the Field”. Special issue of Social Analysis 57(1). (edited with Steffen Dalsgaard)
2004 “Person”. Special issue of Tidsskriftet Antropologi. (edited with Anne Line Dalsgård)
2001 “Antropologi som social kritik”. Special issue of Tidsskriftet Antropologi. (edited with Christian Groes)
Articles and book chapters
Nielsen, M. and R. Willerslev (2024). Comedic comparisons: Absurd juxtapositions and the value of digressive truths in: M. Nielsen, (Ed.): Digressions and the Human Imagination: Tracing the Indirectness of Cultural Creativity. New York, Routledge: pp. 96-111.
Nielsen, M. (2024). One Failure and Six Digressive Leaps in: M. Nielsen, (Ed.): Digressions: Tracing the Indirectness of the Human Imagination. New York, Routledge: pp. 1-6, 42-44, 76-78, 112-114, 146-148, 193-196, 223-225.
Nielsen, M. (2024). Comedic Transubstantiation: The Hermesian Paradox of Being Funny among Stand-Up Comics in New York City in: A. Bandak and D. M. Knight, (Eds.): Porous Becomings: Anthropological Engagements with Michel Serres. Durham, Duke University Press: pp. 233-252.
Jensen, M. H. and M. Nielsen (2024). Sociale bymodeller og produktive misforståelser in: G. Juul, (Ed.): Tingbogen. København, Arkitektens Forlag: pp. 50-54.
Nielsen, M. (2023). "Modelling the City. Bedroom drawer blueprints as urban planning in Maputo, Mozambique." Africa.
Simone, A. and M. Nielsen (2022). Rewilding the City. Urban life and resistance across and beyond visibility in: A. M. Brighenti, (Ed.): The New Politics of Visibility. Spaces, Actors, Practices and Technologies in The Visible. Bristol, UK, Intellect: pp. 108-134.
Nielsen, M. (2022). Sociale bymodeller: Bæredygtig byudvikling nu og i fremtiden in: K. M. Raahauge and S. Eeg, (Eds.): Space of Danish Welfare. København, Arkitektens Forlag: pp. 44-46.
Nielsen, M. (2022). "Speculative Cities: Housing and value conversions in Maputo, Mozambique." Housing Studies.
Nielsen, M. (2021). The Migration of Spaces: Monumental urbanism beyond materiality in: M. Lancione and C. McFarlane, (Eds.): Global Urbanism. Knowledge, Power and the City. New York, Routledge: pp. 276-283.
Nielsen, M. (2021). "Commentary to ‘Just out of reach: Imminence, Meaning and Political Ontology in Mozambique’ by Jason Sumich and Bjørn Bertelsen." Current Anthropology.
Nielsen, M. and Jenkins, P. (2021). “Insurgent aspirations? : Weak Middle Class Utopias in Maputo, Mozambique.” Critical African Studies.
Simone, A. and M. Nielsen (2020). "Urban Chiaroscuro. Plunging into the obscurity of the city." Afrique contemporaine 269-270: 13-40.
Nielsen, M. and M. Bunkenborg (2020). "Monumental Misunderstandings: The Material Entextualization of Mutual Incomprehension in Sino-Mozambican Relations." Social Analysis 64(3): 1-25.
Nielsen, M. (2020). Will the urban middle class save African Cities? Or just itself? MCU Policy Brief #2. Middle Class Urbanism Policy Briefs. Copenhagen, National Museum of Denmark.
Nielsen, M. (2020). "Rooftop Autophagy: Vertical Monadism in Maputo, Mozambique." Urban Forum.
Nielsen, M., J. Sumich & B.E. Bertelsen (2020). "Enclaving: Spatial Detachment as an Aesthetics of Imagination in an urban sub-Saharan African context". Urban Studies.
Nielsen, M. and Bunkenborg, M. (2020). “Natural Resource Extraction in the Interior: Scouts, Spirits and Chinese Loggers in the Forests of Northern Mozambique.” Journal of Southern African Studies.
Sumich, J. and Nielsen, M. (2020). “The Political Aesthetics of Middle Class Housing in (not so) Neoliberal Mozambique.” Antipode.
Nielsen, M., A. Højen & F. Riede (2020). "Islands of Time. Unsettling linearity across deep history." Ethnos.
Nielsen, M. (2019). "Comedic Lies as Transitory Truths." Anthropology News.
Nielsen, M. (2019). “Beyond the Punchline: Mythic Involution as Recursive Futural Orientation among Stand Up Comics in New York City.” In “Orientations to the Future,” Rebecca Bryant and Daniel M. Knight, eds., American Ethnologist website, March 8.
Pardue, D. (2019). “A cidade está em falência: viva a cidade! Entrevista com Morten Nielsen.” Plural 25(2): 169-181.
Nielsen, M. (2018). “An Army of Comedy”. Political jokes and tropic ambiguity in the Trump era in: J. K. Rehak and S. Trnka, (Eds.): The Politics of Joking. Anthropological Engagements. New York, Berghahn Books: pp. 152-162.
Rapport, N. and M. Nielsen (2018). Writing the human: Anthropological accounts as generic fragments in: M. Nielsen and N. Rapport, (Eds.): The Composition of Anthropology. How Anthropological Ideas Emerge and Texts Are Written. London, Routledge: pp. 195-200.
Nielsen, M. (2018). Dialogic aesthetics: Notes and nodes in analogical software coding in: M. Nielsen and N. Rapport, (Eds.): The Composition of Anthropology. How Anthropological Ideas Emerge and Texts Are Written. London, Routledge: pp. 137-154.
Nielsen, M. and N. Rapport (2018). On the Genealogy of Writing Anthropology in: M. Nielsen and N. Rapport, (Eds.): The Composition of Anthropology. How Anthropological Ideas Emerge and Texts Are Written. London, Routledge: pp. 3-12.
Nielsen, M. (2017). Into the ‘Crack' : Scottish agricultural revolutions and the art of moaning in: Nigel Rapport (ed.): Distortion: On Human Processes Beyond the Systemic and Relational. New York: Routledge, pp. 107-124.
Nielsen, M. and M. A. Pedersen (2017). Epi-pro-logue : An Anthropological Theory of Distortion in: N. Rapport, (Ed.): Distortion: Social Processes Beyond the Systemic and Systemic. London, Routledge: pp. 165-173.
Nielsen, M. (2017). "Ideological Twinning : Socialist aesthetics and political meetings in Maputo, Mozambique." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(S1): 139-153.
Nielsen, M. & AbdouMaliq Simone (2016). “The Generic City: Examples fra Jakarta, Indonesia, and Maputo, Mozambique” in: Harvey, Penny; Casper Bruun Jensen and Atsuro Morita (eds.): Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Routledge Companion. New York, Routledge.
Nielsen, M. (2016). “Urban Times. Temporal Topographies and Non-Scalable Cities”. Ethnos.
Nielsen, M. (2016). Into Architecture. Concrete Personhood in Maputo, Mozambique in: Flohr Sørensen, Tim & Mikkel Bille (eds.): Assembling Architecture. London: Routledge
Nielsen, M. and S. Dalsgaard (2015). "Introduction: Time and the Field." in Nielsen, M. & Steffen Dalsgaard (eds): Time and the Field. New York: Berghahn.
Willerslev, R. and M. Nielsen (2015). "Fremtidens paradoks: Når sproget kollapser." Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift 3-4: 304-309.
Andersen, J. E., P. Jenkins & M. Nielsen (2015). "Who plans the African city? A case study of Maputo: part 2 – agency in action." International Development Planning Review 37(4): 423-444.
Andersen, J. E., P. Jenkins & M. Nielsen (2015). "Who plans the African city? A case study of Maputo: part 1 – the structural context." International Development Planning Review 37(3): 331-352.
Nielsen, M. (2015). Invisible Worlds. Sub-Saharan African Cosmologies in a Contemporary Perspective in: Africa. Architecture, Culture, Identity. Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art: pp. 59-62.
Nielsen, M. (2015). Mimesis of the state. From natural disaster to urban citizenship on the outskirts of Maputo, Mozambique in: Kapferer, B. & Lotte Meinert (eds.): In the Event. Towards an Anthropology of Generic Moments. New York: Berghahn
Nielsen, M. and M. A. Pedersen (2015). Infrastructural Involutions. The Imaginative Efficacy of Collapsed Chinese Futuresin Mozambique and Mongolia in: N. Rapport and M. Harris, (Eds.): The Imagination. A Universal Process of Knowledge? Aldershot, Ashgate: pp. 237-262.
Nielsen, M. (2015). The Pataphysical State : Time, debt, and transfigured legalities in ‘The Spirit of the Laws in Mozambique’. HAU. Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(8): 263-266.
Nielsen, M. (2014). How not to make a road: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Socio-economic Effects of a Chinese Infrastructure Project in Mozambique in: C. Alden and S. Chichava, (Eds.): Mozambique and China – challenges and opportunities. Johannesburg, Jacana Press, pp. 67-83.
Nielsen, M. (2014). "The negativity of times. Collapsed futures in Maputo, Mozambique." Social Anthropology 22(2): 213-226.
Nielsen, M. (2014). "A Wedge of Time: Futures in the Present and Presents Without Futures in Maputo, Mozambique " Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20(S1): 166-182.
Nielsen, M. (2013). "Vi bebor mangfoldige verdener. For udsagnet." Tidsskriftet Antropologi 67: 23-28.
Nielsen, M. (2013). "Analogic Asphalt. Suspended Value Conversions Among Young Road Workers in Southern Mozambique." HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3(2), 79-96.
Nielsen, M. (2013). Temporal Aesthetics: On Deleuzian Montage in Anthropology in: R. Willerslev and C. Suhr, (Eds.): Transcultural Montage. New York, Berghahn: pp. 40-57.
Nielsen, M. and S. Dalsgaard (2013). "Introduction: Time and the Field." Social Analysis 57(1), 1-19.
Nielsen, M. and M. A. Pedersen (2013). "Trans-temporal Hinges: Comparing Chinese Investments in Mozambique and Mongolia." Social Analysis 57(1), 122-142.
Nielsen, M. (2012). " Interior Swelling. On the Expansive Effects of Ancestral Interventions in Maputo, Mozambique." Common Knowledge 18(3), 433-450.
Nielsen, M. (2012). "Roadside Inventions: Making Time and Money Work at a Road Construction Site in Mozambique " Mobilities 7(4): 467-480.
Nielsen, M. (2012). Como não construir uma estrada: uma análise etnográfica dos efeitos socioeconómicos de um projecto chinês de construção de infra-estruturas em Moçambique in: S. Chichava and C. Alden, (Eds.): A Mamba e o Dragão. Relações Moçambique-China em perspectiva. Maputo, IESE & SAIIA: pp. 61-80.
Nielsen, M. (2011). "Fremtidens eftervirkninger (enquete)." Tidsskriftet Antropologi 63.
Nielsen, M. (2011) ”Inverse governmentality. The Paradoxical Production of Peri-Urban Planning in Maputo, Mozambique." Critique of Anthropology 31(3): 329-358.
Nielsen, M. (2011) ”Futures Within. Reversible Time and House-building in Maputo, Mozambique”. Anthropological Theory 11(4): 397-423.
Nielsen, M. (2010). "Mimesis of the state. From natural disaster to urban citizenship on the outskirts of Maputo, Mozambique." Social Analysis 54(3): 153-173.
Nielsen, M. (2010). "Contrapuntal Cosmopolitanism. Distantiation as social relatedness among house-builders in Maputo, Mozambique." Social Anthropology 18(4): 396-402.
Nielsen, M. (2009). Regulating Reciprocal Distances. House Construction Projects as Inverse Governmentality in Maputo, Mozambique. DIIS Working Paper 2009:33. Copenhagen, Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).
Nielsen, M. (2007). "Filling in the Blanks. The Potency of Fragmented Imageries of the State." Review of African Political economy 34(114): 695-708.
Nielsen, M. (2007). Shifting Registers of Leadership. An Ethnographic Critique of the Unequivocal Legitimization of Commmunity Authorities i: L. Buur, H. Kyed and T. C. d. Silva, (Eds.): State Recognition of Local Authorities and Public Participation: Experiences, Obstacles and Possibilities in Mozambique. Maputo, Ministério da Justica/Centro de Formacão Juridica e Judiciária: pp. 159-176.
Nielsen, M. (2003). "For en opløsning af alle selvfølgeligheder." Tidsskriftet Antropologi 44: 81-96.
Public
Nielsen, Morten (2020). Sociale bymodeller: Bæredygtig byudvikling nu og i fremtiden. Blog post on: Spaces of Danish Welfare.
Nielsen, Morten (2017). A Danish Anthropologist Asks: Are Comedians Better Anthropologists Than I Am? in theinterrobang.com
Nielsen, Morten (2016). Middelklassen i Mozambique bærer nøglen til fremtidens by in videnskab.dk.
Nielsen, Morten. (2014). Folket skaber byen – urbane fremtider i Maputo i Mozambique. in Baggrund.com.
Nielsen, Morten. (2014). ”The Scottish government and the Danish anthropologist” in Land Matters.