About me

Written by Sif Høg, 2023

I am Sif.

I am a scholar of urban culture with a background in Musicology.

I am based in Copenhagen, Denmark. This city serves as my home and my academic starting point for understanding cities. From here, I analyze and compare urban spaces across the world, drawing on the attributes and challenges of Copenhagen as a lens for my research.

In 2021, I faced challenges related to harassment that targeted a minority aspect of my identity. In my escape from harassment, I found myself homeless, spending the nights on a boat. Even though it appeared that the community around the marina was not what I hoped for, and I was confronted with some of the dangers of living in a place distant from the law, I did not realize that I was living on the rock bottom of Copenhagen until the winter made its entry. These events interrupted my exploration of Queer theory and concepts of monsters on my previous blog, Monstromusi.

Navigating through Copenhagen from below, I got to meet the city and the inhabitants from a new perspective. I met women from different walks of life, hardened by really unfortunate life situations: including financially abused sex workers and survivors of partner violence. From their stories, these women knew the insufficiency of this city’s welfare, which would often overlook people, while they were falling through the cracks. These women would know how to navigate against the violence of the bottom, where poverty and bureaucracy hit the hardest.

These life events of mine and the stories of others opened my eyes to the hidden spaces of Copenhagen and her inhabitants: I became conceptually aware of “the city” in a new way. These insights led me to shift my academic path from Musicology to Urban Culture, a field to which I want to dedicate myself. I have now put old Monstromusi to the grave and built a digital mausoleum, where followers of the past can visit and reminisce about old blog posts. And now I am developing this blog, Sif City, to document this new path: as a space for gathering my thoughts and experiences of urban culture and city planning.