I study the embodied meanings and politics of resurgent production—efforts to recreate craft objects, revive local food ways, and restore the ecologies of these relations, in ways that establish belonging to land and community. Projects are ongoing with artisans in Sápmi, the Sámi Indigenous homeland transcending Fenno-Scandinavian borders, and craft makers and artists in Cyprus. The work has been published in venues such as Current Anthropology, Journal of Cultural Heritage, and the volume The Sámi World, culminating in two books: my monograph Silent Knowledge: Reviving Embodied Practice in Sápmi with University of British Columbia Press and the co-authored (with Matthew Magnani) The Craft of Belonging: Material Culture and Social Boundaries in Sápmi with University of Toronto Press.
Collaborative community applications of the research that mobilize digital technologies appear in Museum Anthropology and Journal of Cultural Heritage with discussion of their ethical implications in Current Anthropology. Meanwhile, the interdisciplinary application of this material lens to develop a “rapid-response anthropology” addressing current societal issues has resulted in essays on the transforming materials and spaces of the pandemic response in Norway, in American Anthropologist’s Public Anthropologies, Journal of Social Archaeology, and the journal Social Anthropology.