Professor Emeritus of Ethnology in the Department of Culture and Media Studies at Umeå University. He concentrates on ethnographic research and cultural studies, working widely on the themes of immigration and ethnicity, work and leisure time, socialization and academic culture.
His essays include Doing-it-yourself. Autoethnography of manual work (2011) and Self-Mystification (2006). His intense collaboration with Orvar Löfgren has led to many articles published in international journals, including Emotions in Academia (2007) and Between Contemporary Art and Cultural Analysis: Alternative Methods for Knowledge Production (2012). University of California Press has published his latest book The Secret World of Doing Nothing (2010, with Orvar Löfgren).