Adam R. Kaul

Professor of Anthropology, Chair of Sociology and Anthropology

• Phone: 309-794-7284
• Email: AdamKaul@augustana.edu
• Office: Evald Hall 107

Dr. Adam Kaul is an anthropologist who focuses primarily on the economic and cultural impacts of the tourism industry in local places around the world. He has carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Ireland, the American Midwest, and Sweden. He has published numerous books and articles on the intercultural interactions that occur in tourist destinations; how tourist sites are reshaped by the rerouting of economic, political, and social capital; and how all of this affects local musicians, artists, street performers, cultural heritage, and local social relationships.

Kaul carried out his doctoral ethnographic fieldwork in a small seaside village on the west coast of Ireland called Doolin where he lived for over a year from 2002-2003. This study led to his first book Turning the Tune: Traditional Music, Tourism & Social Change in an Irish Village (2009). He has conducted subsequent ethnographic fieldwork there for over two decades, as well as in sites across Ireland focusing on music, tourism economies, buskers, and other related issues. 

Dr. Kaul is also the co-editor of Tourists & Tourism from Waveland Press (4th edition, 2026), and the co-editor of Leisure & Death: An Anthropological Tour of Risk, Death & Dying, which won the 2020 Ed Bruner Book Prize from the Council on Heritage and the Anthropology of Tourism. In 2026, he coauthored a book about Bishop Hill, Illinois entitled Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest. His forthcoming project, entitled Refracted Roots, focuses on the intersection of Swedish American ethnicity and political polarization in Minnesota.

He teaches a wide range of courses at ÖйúÌå²ÊÍø ÖйúÌå²ÊÍø, including Introduction to Anthropology; Global Connections; Social & Anthropological Theory; Magic, Ritual & Death; The Anthropology of Art; and the Senior Capstone seminar. He has also taught in several study abroad trips to Ireland, Greece, and Brazil.

Selected publications

• Becoming Utopia: History, Heritage, and Sustainability in the American Midwest, University of Nebraska Press, 2026
• Music on the Edge: Busking at the Cliffs of Moher and the Commodification of a Musical Landscape, Tourist Studies
• TURNING THE TUNE: Traditional Music, Tourism, and Social Change in an Irish Village, Berghahn Books, 2009
• The Limits of Commodification in Traditional Irish Music Sessions, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2007
• Leisure and Death: An Anthropological Tour of Risk, Death, and Dying, University of Colorado Press, 2018
• Tourists & Tourism, 4th edition, Waveland Press, 2026

Specializations: Traditional Irish music, Ireland, Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, Midwest, Tourism, Popular culture, Ethnography, Sustainability, Heritage, Buskers, US political polarization