Lance Gravlee
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lancegravlee.bsky.social
Lance Gravlee
@lancegravlee.bsky.social
Anthropologist and pilot. Former professor, now flying for a US-based global airline. Still have some writing to do (racism and health, research methods, aeromobilities).

📝 https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yeAwZhIAAAAJ&hl=en
A more recent analysis similarly identifies LHR as one of five World Airline Hubs (WAHs), the others being Paris-CDG, New York-JFK, Dubai-DXB, And Tokyo-NRT.

Halás, Marián, Stanislav Kraft, and Pavel Klapka. 2020. The Geographical Journal 186 (1): 2–15.
March 21, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Network analysis clarifies why the power outage at London Heathrow (LHR) is so disruptive to global air travel. I imagine it will take a while for everyone affected to get where they were trying to go.
March 21, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Yes, we have trading cards! Here are two for the planes I fly (plus the 757-200). Ask your pilots next time you fly!
January 22, 2025 at 3:54 PM
My flying for 2024 is complete! From my first to last flight of the year (Feb. 1–Dec. 3) I transported 💺 23,340 passengers to destinations in 🛂 10 countries on 🌍 four continents with 🛫 511 hours of flight time. I can’t wait to see what 2025 brings!
December 16, 2024 at 2:16 PM
My first, brief visit to Dakar was amazing—vibrant, chaotic, beautiful, maddening. I can’t wait to go back.
December 5, 2024 at 8:07 PM
Last night I met my daughter on Broadway for a midweek show (yes, I am very lucky). We saw and loved “& Juliet,” a production that—with its feminism, gender-bending, celebration of nonheteronormative love, and pure wit—seemed like an antidote for these times.
November 21, 2024 at 5:36 PM
I devoured this magnificent book in July. Delighted to see Percival Everett honored with the National Book Award for it last night. @nationalbook.bsky.social
November 21, 2024 at 1:29 PM
It was also fun to stumble upon graduation and soak up the happy vibes!
October 30, 2024 at 8:29 PM
I spent most of my layover in Dublin last week on the campus of Trinity College. The Book of Kells and the Long Room, where they have decanted 200,000 books in an ongoing restoration project, were highlights of the visit.
October 30, 2024 at 8:26 PM
The anthropologist in me will always marvel at what’s possible for the pilot in me. Last week I crossed the Atlantic Ocean four times in six days, waking up in Edinburgh, Boston, and Dublin. Until very recently, any one of those journeys would have involved migration, but many take them as vacation.
October 26, 2024 at 6:13 PM
I wonder how many iPhones are on these six UPS flights from Anchorage to Louisville.
September 19, 2024 at 2:43 AM
My legal name is Clarence, which I've only ever used to publish and screen out telemarketers. Everybody (including my parents) has always called me Lance. Perhaps it's time to reconsider that.
September 16, 2024 at 5:07 PM
Anthropology will always be part of me, and I hope to remain part of it—I still have some writing to do. But I am overjoyed to be on this new path and hope to see you on a Delta Air Lines flight soon!

May each of you have the good fortune to live a life with room for more than one dream. (8/8)
September 12, 2024 at 2:04 PM
But I could only encourage my students to pursue their dreams for so long before I had to honor my own. (7/8)
September 12, 2024 at 2:04 PM
When I came back to flying a decade ago, it rekindled my childhood joy. This time around, the opportunities were far more abundant than they had been when I was young, and it dawned on me that I had a second chance at a dream deferred. I agonized over it for years. (6/8)
September 12, 2024 at 2:04 PM
I earned my pilot’s license when I was 18 but didn’t fly much for the next 20 years. Family, grad school, and my career took priority—not to mention that I couldn’t afford to fly often enough to be safe. So I set it aside. And I have no regrets about any of that. (5/8)
September 12, 2024 at 2:03 PM
My hometown also is not far from Cape Canaveral. In elementary school during the 1980s, we would watch the Space Shuttle leave the launch pad on our classroom TVs and then go outside to watch it soar the rest of the way. I spent a lot of my childhood looking up. (4/8)
September 12, 2024 at 2:03 PM
One of the dreams I returned to was among my oldest. I grew up in an aviation town, a place where small planes are built and people from all over the world learn to fly them. (3/8)
September 12, 2024 at 2:03 PM
But for reasons idiosyncratic and structural, the job and its role in my life gradually changed. I started to crave more balance. I stopped defining myself by my work. Life became fuller. And I saw more opportunity for others to work in the scholarly space I had occupied. It was time to pivot. (2/8)
September 12, 2024 at 2:03 PM
Last month I cleaned out my office and resigned from my dream job as an anthropologist at the University of Florida. I am deeply grateful for my time there. The work that students, colleagues, and I did together felt meaningful and full of purpose. (1/8)
September 12, 2024 at 2:03 PM