Annika Rabo has been professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University since 2007. Previously she was associate professor at Linköping University, researcher at the Swedish Research Council and researcher at the Centre for Research in International Migration and Ethnic Relations – CEIFO – at Stockholm University. Annika Rabo received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology in 1986 after completing a thesis on the political and social effects of a gigantic irrigation scheme along the Euphrates in northeast Syria. Analysis of categorisations and systems of classification, and analysis of state, bureaucracies and policies as well as state–citizen relationships have been central to her work. She has worked on numerous projects in the Middle East, mainly in Syria, since the late 1970s, as well as in Sweden, focusing on a variety of topics such as education, gender, kinship and law, as well as urban and rural development and transnational migration.