Andrew M. Gardner

Andrew M. Gardner (born July 9, 1969) is an American anthropologist and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Puget Sound. His research focuses on migration, labor, and urbanization in the Arabian Peninsula, particularly the Gulf States. He is the author of The Fragmentary City: Migration, Modernity, Difference in the Urban Landscape of Doha, Qatar, City of Strangers and has edited collections on migration, labor, and applied anthropology.

Early life and education Gardner was born to Gordon and Janice Gardner. He received a BA from George Washington University in 1991 and an MA from the University of Arizona in 2000. He received a PhD from the University of Arizona in 2005, where his doctoral research examined the experiences of Indian migrants in Bahrain.

During his graduate studies at the University of Arizona, he worked with the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA), a research center within the School of Anthropology focused on applied and community-based anthropological research.

Career His academic career began with doctoral research at the University of Arizona, where he studied the contemporary livelihoods of Bedouin pastoral nomads in Saudi Arabia. During this period, he observed how these pastoral economies had become intertwined with migrant labor from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, a realization that shifted the direction of his future scholarship toward migration and labor in the Gulf.

In 2002–2003, Gardner conducted a year of ethnographic fieldwork in Bahrain, focusing on the Indian diaspora and the structures of labor migration that shape their lives. This research became the basis of his dissertation and later his book City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain (2010).

He has served as program chair and has chaired or participated in committees of the American Anthropological Association, including the Margaret Mead Award Committee and the Sol Tax Distinguished Service Award Committee.

He has served as program chair for the 2025 meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology.

Research While his research continued to explore these issues in both Bahrain and Qatar, between 2010 and 2013

Gardner’s research focuses on migration, urbanization, and political ecology in the Arabian Peninsula. His early work examined the lived experiences of South Asian and other migrant workers in the Gulf States, particularly within the context of the kafala sponsorship system.

His most recent book, The Fragmentary City: Migration, Modernity, and Difference in the Urban Landscape of Doha, Qatar (Cornell 2024), examines how decades of migration and rapid urban development have transformed the city of Doha.

Selected publications

Books

Journal articles