Heneise's main research interests include indigenous religion, ecological knowledge, ritual healing, medical pluralism, dreams, and oral epics in the Himalayas. He is also interested in the notion of Highland Asia as a new world region, and his co-edited book (with Jelle JP Wouters) The Routledge Handbook of Highland Asia (2022), is the first comprehensive and critical overview of the ethnographic and anthropological work in Highland Asia over the past half a century. The 32 chapter handbook presents Highland Asia as a world region that cuts across the traditional divides inherited from colonial and Cold War area divisions - the Indian subcontinent / South Asia, Southeast Asia, China / East Asia, and Central Asia. Heneise is also completing a book with indigenous scholar Dharamsing Teron documenting the 35-hour long Kecharhe Alun oral epic in Karbi Anglong, Northeast India. The first effort of its kind to fully record and document, translate, and publish the Kecharhe Alun, the project has involved a community of indigenous researchers in Assam, and led to renewed interest in the region in the oral epic genre. 

Circumpolar archaeology: northern Fennoscandia, Kola Peninsula; formerly, Labrador-Eastern Arctic, Greenland

Hunter-gatherer social complexity (particularly the period ca. 2000 BC in Finnmark and on the Kola Peninsula)

Reindeer hunting to herding transitions; organization and management of hunting landscapes (hunting-pit systems and Commons management)

Lithic raw material sources and use in Finnmark's Stone Age

Knowledge construction in archaeology: theory, research history; cognitive science perspectives 

Methods: varying degrees of engagement with geoarchaeology, paleoclimate, shellfish analysis, radiocarbon dating

Current research:
I am currently studying climate change adaptation in Himalaya, as part of the project “Himalayan Connections: Melting Glaciers, Sacred Landscapes and Mobile Technologies in a Changing Climate” (HimalConnect) funded by the Research Council of Norway.

The project explores the historical and current perceptions and responses to environmental hazards in two Buddhist communities in the Himalaya, and how they change with the introduction of new connectivities and new modes of governance. Particular focus is given to how knowledge about such management strategies can be scaled out and made relevant across the different decision-making levels of environmental management.

Further research interests:

• Buddhism
• Climate change adaptation in the Himalaya
• Religion and economy
• Religion and politics
• Indigeneity
• Social history
• Tibet- and Himalaya studies