Associate Professor in Educational Anthropology at the Department of Education, The Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus.

Laura Gilliams research interest covers topics such as children, schools, ethnicity, conflict and identity.  She has performed outstanding field studies in Belfast (1996-1997), where she examined the Catholic and Protestant children's understanding of the Northern Ireland conflict. In 2000 she spent a year in Guinea-Bissau, where she lived among internally displaced children and women. Here she uncovered the role of children in Guinean society and the widespread practice of 'Fostering' (exchange and provisional adoption of children).

Laura Gilliam is a member of Copenhagen's Expert Think Tank on Integration and an integral member of CESAU. Her publication list includes several articles, contributions to scientific anthologies and books such as:

• Everyday Life, Distant Connections: Studies of children, youngsters and migration [Lokale hverdagsliv, fjerne forbindelser: Studier af børn, unge og migration], 2005.
• The impossible children and the descent man: Identity, trouble and Muslim communities among children from ethnic minorities [De umulige børn og det ordentlige menneske: identitet, ballade og muslimske fællesskaber blandt etniske minoritetsbørn], 2009.

In resemblance to other groups of socially and culturally marginalized boys, many ethnic minority boys in Danish schools have developed strong anti-school sentiments and oppositional cultural forms while still recognizing the status of education. An effect of this is that quite a few boys are finding themselves in troubled positions as ‘immigrants’ and ‘Muslims’. Yet they are also trapped in positions in between opposing identities and conflicting school strategies. This emphasizes how troubled positions are rarely single-facetted, but multi-facetted, negotiated and contested between different cultural repertoires. A closer look at different boys’ ways to handle these troubled positions illuminates how this affects the identities and social strategies of individual boys.