AsPr Sverre Molland
Sverre Molland is a Steering Group Member of the Migration Hub. He is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. His research focus on the intersection between migration, aid, and security in mainland Southeast Asia, and he has over two decades of research and program experience on human trafficking, development, and mobility in the Mekong region. Currently he serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology (TAPJA) and has held various leadership roles, including Discipline Head of Anthropology and Research Convenor within the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the ANU. He collaborates with UN agencies and external partners through consultancies, commissioned research, and other forms of engagement to extend his academic research.
Research Interest
My research examines the intersections between migration, development and security in a comparative perspective, with specific focus on governance regimes and intervention modalities in mainland Southeast Asia.
There are four analytical domains that are of particular importance:
- Space-governance relations: how do spatial (and temporal) dimensions of migration policy come into being, and how do they affect interventions?
- Biolegitimacy: How does life legitimise interventions and how is life legitimated within aid and migration discourses?
- Development aid and migration governance networks: what accounts for continuity and change within trans-institutional networks of aid and migration governance, and how can they be accounted for ethnographically?
- Intervention modalities in a comparative perspective.