Academic Appointments


  • Lecturer, Writing and Rhetoric Studies

Professional Education


  • PhD, Stanford University, Anthropology (2016)

Current Research and Scholarly Interests


Mark Gardiner is a cultural anthropologist who studies resource politics, conservation, energy, and the intersection of science and government in Southern Africa. He is currently investigating the region's developing infrastructure crisis and the functioning of the regional electricity grid.

His dissertation, Technocracy in Black and White: Nature, Race, and Nation in the Management of Namibian Uranium, analyzed the politics surrounding a "uranium rush" that occurred in that southern African country in the mid-2000s.

Mark's teaching focuses on rhetoric in conjunction with critical approaches to the environment, development, and race. While his current teaching is in Stanford's Program in Writing and Rhetoric, previous courses have been through the Anthropology Department, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and the Center for African Studies.