Born on 20 February 1948 in
Copenhagen, Hastrup is one of the five daughters of the physician Bent Faurschou Hastrup (1922–85) and his wife Else Blinkenberg, an educator. After matriculating from
Aarhus Cathedral School in 1965, she studied geography and biology at
Aarhus University. She went on to study
ethnography at
Copenhagen University, receiving an M.Sc. in 1973. The following year, she was awarded the university's gold medal for researching the woman's place in anthropology. In 1990, she was appointed professor at the University of Copenhagen where she continued her interest in theatre, arranging a large conference on theatre anthropology. In 1966, she travelled to England to research the history of the Shakespearean theatre tradition in collaboration with the
Royal Shakespeare Company. Her interest in the relationship between human structures and the process of change resulted in her appointment as the first head of research at the
Danish Centre for Human Rights in 1998. More recently, from 2009 to 2014, Hastrup ran
Waterworlds, a major European research project analysing social responses to
climate change, followed by fieldwork in Greenland, where she researched the effects of the modern world on a small community of hunters. ==Awards==