Department of Anthropology and Sociology

Anna Britt Gordon Löfstrand

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Key information

Roles: Department of Anthropology and Sociology PhD Research Student
Department: Department of Anthropology and Sociology
Qualifications: MA Migration and Diaspora Studies, SOAS, London, UK (2022)
Masters in Teaching, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA (2016)
BA Sociology and Anthropology, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR, USA (2013)
Thesis title: More Than a Building: Migrant and First-Generation Belonging, Community and Future Imagination at Hyper-Diverse American High School
Internal Supervisors: Dr Naomi Leite & Dr Orkideh Behrouzan

Biography

Anna has a background in education and has taught at the primary, secondary school, and higher education levels. Her background in anthropology, especially of youth movements in North Africa and women’s work in South Asia, lead her to a five-year career teaching history, geography, English literature and language in Seattle, USA.

Anna’s early fieldwork took her to Chennai, India where she worked with female primary and secondary school teachers on issues of gendered work and work outside the home. Her undergraduate thesis, An Economy of Goodness: Everyday Morality and Modernity in South India, paved a pathway for the school-based ethnographic fieldwork she does today. As an undergraduate, she studied in Marrakesh and Fez, Morocco in 2011, focusing on youth movements and political activism against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. Her time in Morocco sparked a keen interest in youth identity formation and imagination(s) of future possibilities during turbulent political times.

Anna's current work, supported by the Stapley Trust and SOAS, focuses on hyper-diverse and multi-lingual migrant and diasporic communities in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. She works with educators, students, families, and other community members to understand the role of schools as community hubs within these neighbourhoods. Currently undertaking fieldwork, her work looks at the ways in which school can be a force for identity formation, belonging, and future imagination beyond physical, brick and mortar walls, in the lives of young people, especially those with migrant backgrounds. She also looks at issues of migration, especially economic migration and forced migration, from the Global South to the Global North. She honed this research focus during her MA in Migration and Diaspora Studies at SOAS and her time at RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute, in London.

Anna has presented on these topics, as well as the idea of ‘stealth anthropology’ – sneaking anthropology sideways into secondary school, non-anthropology courses – at the 2024 Royal Anthropological Institute Conference Anthropology and Education, the 2025 SOAS Teaching and Learning Conference, and the 2025 European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Teaching Anthropology Network (TAN) Conference Anthropologists and New Audiences: Pathways to Teaching and Learning.