Bjorn Thomassen

Bjørn Thomassen (born 1968, Denmark) is an anthropologist and social scientist. He is associate professor at Roskilde University in the Department of Society and Globalisation. From 2003-2012 he worked at The American University of Rome where he was Chair of the department of International Relations.

Thomassen holds BA and MA degrees in Anthropology from the Institute of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen (1994 and 1997) and a Doctoral Degree (Ph.D.) in Political and Social Science from the Department of Political and Social Sciences (2001), at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. After his PhD he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University College of Cork, Ireland.

Thomassen's scholarly work develops across the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, politics, philosophy and history. His research has been published in a variety of social science journals, including "Anthropological Theory, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Europæa, Journal des Europeanistes, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, etc. He has written non-scholarly articles for the Danish weekly, "Weekendavisen".

His PhD research related to the anthropology of political borders, with ethnographic focus on the border region between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia known as the “Julian Region”. He examined how cultural and national identities are constructed through conflicting collective memories in a political and cultural environment defined by historically changing borders. He wrote his PhD thesis as a narrative evolving from the life-stories of self-identified Italians from Istria who for various reasons chose to leave Tito's Yugoslavia and moved “back” to Italy.

After his PhD, Thomassen has engaged various areas of research. He writes and publishes on immigration in Italy. Together with colleagues James Walston and Isabella Clough-Marinaro he has organized several conferences on immigration and integration in Italy. In this context he is also engaged in various community projects, including a project launched by the American University of Rome in 2011 to foster immigrant leadership in Italy.

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