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Bio

 is a cultural anthropologist whose research and teaching interests include capitalism, the state, cash transfers, morality, and contemporary Europe (particularly the Nordic countries). His scholarship on unemployment and the welfare state in Norway has appeared in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Economic Anthropology, the Anthropology of Work Review, as well as edited volumes, including Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond and Migration and Multiculturalism in Scandinavia. He is also the co-editor of  (2020, Palgrave Macmillan). His first book, Down and Out in Utopia, examines the experiences of people who lost their jobs and became users of Norway's welfare system during the "oil crash" of the mid-2010s.

McKowen's research has been supported by the Fulbright Program (2010-2011, 2023-2024), the Josephine de Karman Fellowship Trust, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education, the Princeton Fellowship of Woodrow Wilson Scholars, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

Research Interests

Growth and Welfare Regimes • Work and Unemployment • Morality and Ethics • Digital Technology • Scandinavia

Courses Taught

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology • Cultural Aspects of Business • Culture and Diversity in American Life • Society and Culture in Contemporary Europe • History of Anthropology, Part Two • Advanced Seminar in Ethnology: Economy and Morality

Current Graduate Students

Sara Beth Becker • Genevieve Soucek