About

I am a social anthropologist and much of my research to date has been carried out in Greenland, Alaska, Canada, Finland, Scotland and Wales. I am interested in the anthropology and environmental history of weather and climate; environmental change and resource use issues in rural and coastal communities; the anthropology of energy and extractive industries; place, locality, depopulation and migration; identities and borderlands; and geopolitical anthropology.

I read sociology and social anthropology at the University of Aberdeen and did my PhD at the University of Cambridge. I am currently Professor and Henry Marshall Tory Chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Before moving to Canada, I was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. I have also held teaching and research posts at the University of Edinburgh, Brunel University, and the University of Cambridge, and was Finland Distinguished Professor at the Thule Institute, University of Oulu. I am Adjunct Professor at Ilisimatusarfik/University of Greenland and Greenland Climate Research Centre in Nuuk. I have been Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, am a Senior Associate Scientist at the Stefansson Arctic Institute in Akureyri, Iceland, and a Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary. I was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2008.