With a background in social anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, my research effort is directed to a range of pressing contemporary questions.  How can we extend the role, and benefits of art to more people and more places in contemporary life? How can we grow creative expression?  How can we put the festive back in festivals?
How can we create the kind of cities we want and need rather than those produced merely by unplanned, unthinking development? How can we create the kinds of lives we want to live, and build a sense of belonging for all rather than accept the socially isolated, precarious and lonely worlds of contemporary individualism?  
And how can we live better lives with our non-human allies and neighbours?  We are only just beginning to understand the creative potential of new kinds of relationships with non-human kin, and it is as exciting as it is urgent and health promoting.
 My research seeks to identify, document and understand the nature of these problems as well as work with partners to seek and evaluate new strategies.  My research is characterised by a keen interest in the application of contemporary theory, especially using forms of ‘the new materialism’, embodied perspectives, contemporary ritual, mobilities and posthumanism.  I recently edited the Routledge International Handbook of More-than-Human Studies (2024). From social anthropology, I use very intensive methods involving participant observation, biographical interviewing and immersive fieldwork combined with archival, data base and survey research, that derives from my sociology background. 
 In recent years, my research has looked intensively at a range of museums and cities around the world that have attempted to break free from the limitations of conventional models. 
 I am opening up a new field of research on art tourism.  Hitherto buried under the overcrowded category of ‘cultural tourism’, this increasingly significant flow of travellers (which includes a significant number of art world creatives) drives cultural exchange, creativity and innovation on a global scale. We know very little about it, yet few cities are not trying to attract it.
 I have begun to develop new work on festivals and markets through a study of the relatively few that are super successful and those that survived the purges of traditional festivals and street markets in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
 I have pioneered new theoretical and research work on loneliness and belonging across the life course, its connections to different kinds of cities and space and its connections with gender cultures, the public sphere, place, housing, domestic relations, companion animals, new technologies and health.  With Bruce Tranter I recently embarked on a new study of the relationship between loneliness and belonging in Australia and in particular how forms of belonging derive from arts and culture, generation, time, place and other more-than-human sources.
Career achievments
    • Authored 110 peer reviewed books, journal articles and book chapters. These include 18 research books, 1 edited book, 47 journal articles and 46 book chapters.  
   • Named on Stanford’s World Top 2% Researchers rankings, 2024
   • Appointed to the ARC College of Experts 2023-2026
   • Research cited 10,137 times (Google Scholar); H-index 42.
   • Delivered 48 invited keynote presentations and 34 public lectures since 2009,
   • Awarded $4.2 million in competitive research funding across career.
   • Commissioned to deliver the Sir William Dobell Annual Art Lecture 2020, School of Art and Design, Australian National University.
   •  Elected Member of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth, UK. (Elected 1990).     
   • Appointed to Australian Research Council’s College of Experts Selection Advisory Committee (SAC) for the 2020 Special Research Initiative – Australian Society, History and Culture.
    • Anti-museum  (2020), included in Charles Saumarez Smith’s [Former CEO of Royal Academy] best 5 art museum books in the  world.    
    • Appointed to the Australian Research Council’s Engagement and Impact Panel, Creative Arts and Humanities, 2018
    • Contributed ‘Mona and the political-cultural economy of independent galleries’ to book awarded the Prize for Best Arts Anthology of the Year (2021): The Australian Art Field: Practices, Policies, Institutions. 
     • The Making of Mona (2014) has sold 21,145 copies (as of 7 April 2025)