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Fiona Greenland

Associate Professor of Sociology
Curriculum Vitae (209.9 KB)

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/fiona-greenland
CURIA Lab: www.curialab.org

Research Interests: Cultural Sociology, Sociology of Art, Historical and Comparative Methods, Social Theory, Archaeology

Fiona Rose Greenland is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia. She holds a D.Phil. in Classical Archaeology (Oxford University) and a Ph.D. in Sociology (University of Michigan) and draws on methods and frameworks from both disciplines in her research. Her current work builds the concept of natiocide—nation-killing in contrast to nation-building—based on extensive fieldwork in wartime Ukraine. The book, To Kill a Nation, is under contract with Princeton University Press (forthcoming 2026). Dr. Greenland’s prior book, Ruling Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2021), studied tomb raiders, informal trading networks, and police power in Italy and received the American Sociological Association’s Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in Culture.

Greenland is the founder and co-director of the Cultural Resilience and Informatics Lab (CURIA), where she has invited a dynamic and diverse team of researchers to pursue both scholarship and public engagement in the relationship between state violence and material cultural heritage. In 2023 and 2024, she led the CURIA Lab’s Conflict Observatory Ukraine team, which investigated alleged attacks by Russia on Ukrainian cultural heritage sites. She continues to support investigations into cultural atrocities globally as a certified OSINT researcher (open source intelligence) and registered expert with Justice Rapid Response (JRR), an independent Geneva-based human rights organization. She is a research fellow at INDEX-Ukraine (Lviv).

Greenland has published widely in peer-reviewed journals including Theory & Society, Sociological Theory, Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change, and the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. She co-edited Cultural Violence and the Destruction of Human Communities with Fatma Müge Göçek (Routledge, 2020).

UVA Affiliations

  • Associate Professor of Anthropology (by courtesy)
  • Senior Faculty Fellow, Office of the Vice President for Research
  • Associate Faculty, Global Commerce in Culture and Society (web site) [https://globalstudies.as.virginia.edu/global-commerce-culture-society]
  • Founder and Director, CURIA Lab (web site) [curialab.org]
  • Member, Faculty Steering Committee, Quantitative Collaborative

Selected Publications

Books

2021. Greenland, F.R. Ruling Culture: Art Police, Tomb Robbers, and the Rise of Cultural Power in Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2020. Greenland, F.R. and F.M. Göçek (eds.), Cultural Violence and the Destruction of HumanCommunities: New Theoretical Perspectives Communities: New Theoretical Perspectives. London: Routledge.

Articles (Full list available upon request.)

2021. Whitaker, A. and F.R. Greenland. "Theory of an Art Market Scandal: Artistic integrity and financial speculation in the Inigo Philbrick case,” American Journal of Cultural Sociology doi.org/10.1057/s41290-021-00134-1

2020. Greenland, F.R. “Long-range continuities in comparative and historical sociology: the case of parasitism and women’s enslavement,” Theory and Society 48(6): 883-902. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09370-4

2020. Greenland, F.R. and G. Steinmetz. “Orlando Patterson, his work, and his legacy: a special issue in celebration of the republication of Slavery and Social Death,” Theory and Society 48(6): 785-797. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11186-019-09371-3

2019. Greenland, F.R. “New insights into the antiquities market,” International Journal of Cultural Property 26(3): 211-225.

2019. Greenland, F.R., J.V. Marrone, O. Topçuoglu and T. Vorderstrasse. “A Site-Level Market Model of the Antiquities Trade,” International Journal of Cultural Property 26(1): 21-47.

2018. Greenland, F. "Materiality and Consecration," American Behavioral Scientist https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764218801063

2018. Greenland, F.  "Broadening the Landscape of Blackness," Contexts 17(3): 8-9.

2018. Greenland, F.R. "Material culture and the problem of agency, "American Journal of Cultural Sociology. doi: 10.1057/s41290-017-0054-6.

2018. Greenland, F.R. “Consecration and materiality,” American Behavioral Scientist doi: 10.1177/0002764218801063

2017. Greenland, F.R. "Freeports and steel containers: The corpora delicti of artefact trafficking," History and Anthropology 1: 15-20.

2016. Greenland, F.R. “Universalism, Nationalism, and the Italian Model of Repatriation” Brown Journal of World Affairs, 26(1).

2016. Rose-Greenland, F. “Color Perception in Sociology: Materiality and authenticity at the Gods in Color show.” Sociological Theory 34(2): 81-105.

2016. Hirschman, D., E. Berrey and F. Rose-Greenland. “Dequantifying diversity: affirmative action and admissions at the University of Michigan.” Theory and Society 45(3): 265-301.

Office Hours

Wednesdays: 2:00pm-5:00pm
Can be scheduled at https://calendly.com/fargreenland/office-hours?month=2025-09
Randall 222