Mair Underwood

Dr. Mair Underwood is an anthropologist in the School of Social Science within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Queensland. She earned a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours), and a Doctor of Philosophy in Social Science from the University of Queensland, completing her PhD in 2005 with a thesis titled "Living in bodies, living as bodies: the relationship between body and self at different ages." As a lecturer, she coordinates courses including SOSC2190 Human Bodies, Culture and Society and SOCY1060 Gender, Sexuality and Society: An Introduction. Her academic career at UQ has been supported by grants such as two ARC Discovery Projects from 2025 to 2028 focused on boys' and young men's well-being education and digital lives, a UQ Early Career Researcher grant from 2017 to 2018 on recreational use of image and performance enhancing drugs, and a UQ Teaching Innovation Grant from 2016 to 2018 for developing a database of assessment techniques to promote student engagement and academic integrity.

Underwood specializes in the anthropology of the body and body modifications such as tattoos and bodybuilding, with a focus on online ethnographic research in enhanced bodybuilding communities and the social lives of image and performance enhancing drugs. Her work examines how these practices create, reflect, and disrupt social boundaries like gender and class, alongside topics including muscle dysmorphia, broscience, harm reduction, and self-medicated testosterone use. Key publications include the journal article "‘Project Monster’: exploring projects of monstrification in bodybuilding communities" (Body & Society, 2024, with Karin Sellberg), "From ‘bro, do you even lift?’ to ‘bro, do you even science?’: How the relationship between science and broscience can inform the development of allied image and performance enhancing drug harm reduction" (Performance Enhancement & Health, 2025), and "'The day you start lifting is the day you become forever small': Bodybuilders explain muscle dysmorphia" (Health, 2022, with Roberto Olivardia). Notable book chapters are "Taking ‘the god of all steroids’ and ‘making a pact with the devil’: online bodybuilding communities and the negotiation of trenbolone risk" (Doping in Sport and Fitness, 2023) and "'We're all gonna make it brah': homosocial relations, vulnerability and intimacy in an online bodybuilding community" (Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media, 2018). Her scholarship has accumulated over 850 citations on Google Scholar and received media attention, with public engagement through YouTube, podcasts such as one with VPA Australia, and presentations including to the Penington Institute in 2021 on harm reduction from bodybuilders' perspectives.

Professional Email: m.underwood@uq.edu.au