Mark Graham Professor, studierektor avancerad och forskarnivå

My research interests traverse the fields of refugee studies, gender and sexuality (including queer theory), material culture and consumption, welfare bureaucracies, and most recently sustainable urban development and planning.

Research into gender and sexuality culminated in ‘Anthropological Explorations in Queer Theory’ (2014) in which I applied queer theory to a range of anthropological concerns including, materiality, the body and the senses, gifts and commodities, diversity discourses, intersectionality, biologisms, popular ‘mythology’, and methods. The book extends queer theory beyond obviously sexual phenomena to include areas that have hitherto been neglected in much queer theoretical writing. My previous work on refugee studies examined return migration, the Internet and diasporas, the labour market (with a particular focus on ethnic and racial discrimination), and discourses and practices surrounding diversity and integration policies within public-sector organisations. Several of these themes were addressed in the book ‘Bureaucracy, Suspicion and Integration in the Welfare State’ (2019), which examined the place of Muslims in Swedish society. In particular, it points to the sometimes problematic homologies between integration policy and theory, bureaucratic practices, and cultural representations of Muslims that work in tandem to construct Muslims as threatening others. 

More recent research is informed by more-than-human ethnography, and a range of theories dealing with aspects of materiality. More specifically, it focuses on urban sustainability, and the material underpinnings of place, community and sexuality in urban settings.

I have conducted fieldwork in Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands and Australia. 

I am Co-Editor in Chief of Ethnos (together with Nils Bubandt Aarhus University).