We are the Land
I am currently project lead on the educational initiative We Are the Land, developed in collaboration with photojournalist Emil Hougaard. The project explores land rights, ecology, and gender across Denmark and Kenya through storytelling, fieldwork, and workshops for students.
My work includes concept development, research, direction and the creation of educational formats and screenings. The project builds on my master’s research in Human Ecology, where I began investigating land rights and land grabbing. I was struck by how few women globally have access to land – less than 20% – and in Denmark & Kenya, less than 5%.
The project was produced by Josephine Lau Jessen and Emil Hougaard Bertelsen and supported by Danida’s Awareness and Engagement Fund – OpEn Puljen.
More information at wearetheland.info
The purpose of this project is to start conversations on farming, landownership and capitalistic and colonial systems. Through workshops on schools and institutions the project highlights the importance of understanding land rights and ownership in agriculture. As well as to strengthen young people’s commitment to taking local action on global issues related to agriculture, land ownership, and gender equality.
The trailer is edited by Emil Hougaard Bertelsen.
The project focuses on small-scale farming and the role of women, whose contributions to the global food system are often overlooked. While women make up a significant part of the agricultural workforce worldwide, they rarely have equal rights to own land.
At the same time, it remains difficult to define and measure land ownership — both in terms of data and meaning. Ownership is only one way of relating to land, and historically, the idea of owning land is relatively recent, shaped by colonial and capitalist systems. For millennia, Indigenous communities have related to land in ways that did not disrupt ecological balance.
We Are the Land explores these histories while questioning the very notion of ownership — asking whether land, plants, animals, and ecosystems can ever truly be considered human property.
Berit Kiilerich is one of the few female shepherds in Denmark. From Lystbækgaard in West Jutland, she is part of a women-led movement reviving the ancient practice of pastoralism.
The heath once stretched endlessly. Now, it slowly gives way to trees — yet the purple heather still breathes across the land. Among it, 800 sheep move steadily, keeping the landscape open, alive.
Wrapped in wool, the shepherds follow the rhythm of the land. Berit sees what is often overlooked: each plant, each shift in the terrain, part of a larger whole. The sheep are not only grazing they are shaping and sustaining the landscapes.
The heather is a living knowledge. A system of connections, where nothing stands alone – and our role as humans is to be a part of these landscapes, rather than exploiting them, Berit explains.
Paulina is a retired schoolteacher and farmer. She walks through the long fields, where her potato plants have turned yellow from the rain. In recent years, heavier and more frequent downpours have flooded parts of Meru County in eastern Kenya suffocating the crops and destroying the harvest.
“We used to fill 80 sacks of potatoes,” she says. “Now there is nothing. What little we have, I give to the cow.”