Ralph Grillo is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex where he was formerly Dean of the School of African and Asian Studies and founding director of the Research Centre for Culture, Development and the Environment. Although he has also written on the anthropology of development and the anthropology of language, he has had a long-standing concern with transnational migration and ethnicity in Africa and Europe (African Railwaymen: Solidarity and Opposition in an African Labour Force, Cambridge 1973; Ideologies and Institutions in Urban France: The Representation of Immigrants, Cambridge 19850, and co-edited special issues of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on Transnational Islam, 2004, and Africa<>Europe, A Double Engagement, 2008. Since the mid-1990s he has focused on cultural diversity and its governance in France, Italy, and the UK (Pluralism and the Politics of Difference: State, Culture, and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective, Oxford 1998; The Politics of Recognizing Difference: Multiculturalism Italian Style, co-editor, Ashgate 2002; The Family in Question: Immigrant and Ethnic Minorities in Multicultural Europe, editor, Amsterdam 2008). Most recently he has been working with anthropologists, lawyers and political scientists on issues relating to cultural and religious diversity and the law in Europe and North America (Legal Practice and Cultural Diversity, co-editor, Ashgate 2009), with a particular interest in the ‘legal industry’ which has grown up around Islam. Through the Sussex Centre of Migration Research he has been actively involved in the European ‘network of excellence’, IMISCOE, and is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Göttingen, and the Academic Forum of the Runnymede Trust in the UK.

Recent and future publications include:

Grillo, R.D. (Forthcoming, 2012), ‘Multiethnic Societies’, Concise Encyclopedia of Comparative Sociology,  Leiden: Brill.

Grillo, R.D. (Forthcoming, 2012), 'In the Shadow of the Law: Muslim Marriage and Divorce in the UK', in R. Mehdi, W. Menski & J. Nielsen (eds.) Interpreting Divorce Laws in Islam, Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing. 

Grillo, R.D. (Forthcoming, 2012), ‘The Man Who “Sold His Daughter for Beer”: An Oaxacan Migrant in a Californian Court’, in A. Cruz Manjarrez (ed.) Multiculturalismo y minorías étnicas en las Américas,   Colima: Universidad de Colima.

 Grillo, R.D. (Forthcoming, 2012), ‘Between Assimilation and Parallel Lives: The Crisis of Identification Among Migrant Youth (In Italian)’, Mondi Migranti.

Grillo, R.D. (2012), ‘British Multiculturalism: A Negotiated Order’, in Académie royale de Belgique (ed.) Les minorités: un défi pour les États. Actes du colloque international (22 et 23 mai 2011), 207-244.  Bruxelles: Académie royale de Belgique

Grillo, R.D. (2011), ‘Marriages, Arranged and Forced: The UK Debate’, in E. Kofman, M. Kohli, A. Kraler & C. Scholl (eds.) Gender, Generations and the Family in International Migration, 77-97.  Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Grillo, R.D. (2011), ‘Cultural Exclusion: Migrant Minorities and the Law in the UK’, L’Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo XII/XIII 13(1): 27-35.

Grillo, R.D. (2011), ‘Danes and Others’, in K.F. Olwig & K. Pærregaard (eds.) The Question of Integration: Immigration, Exclusion and the Danish Welfare State, 266-276.  Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Grillo, R.D. (2010), ‘British and Others: From “Race” to “Faith”‘, in S. Vertovec & S. Wessendorf (eds.) The Multiculturalism Backlash: European Discourses, Policies and Practices, 50-71.  London: Routledge.

Grillo, R.D. (2010), Contesting Diversity in Europe: Alternative Regimes and Moral Orders, MMG Working Paper 10-02. Göttingen: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Grillo, R.D. (2009), Cultural Diversity and the Law: Challenge & Accommodation, MMG Working Paper 09-14. Göttingen: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Doctoral Students

Ralph Grillo no longer supervises research students. His last three students were:

Nabi Misdaq - Political frailty, national integration and external interference : causes and consequences of the communist coup and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (awarded 2003)
Bruno Riccio - Senegalese transmigrants and the construction of immigration in Emilia-Romagna, Italy (awarded 2000)
Ruba Salih - Transnational lives, plurinational subjects : identity, migration and difference among Moroccan women in Italy (awarded 2000)