Graburn began teaching at Berkeley in 1964. He had visiting appointments at a number of national museums globally including the
National Museum of Civilization in
Ottawa, Canada Le Centre des Hautes Etudes Touristiques, Aix-en-Provence, the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) in Osaka, the Research Center for Korean Studies, Kyushu National University, Fukuoka, the International Institute for Culture, Tourism and Development, London Metropolitan University, the
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil and he lectured at twenty-four Chinese universities. He is currently a professor emeritus in Sociocultural Anthropology at
University of California, Berkeley. His areas of research included "social and cultural anthropology, kinship, art, tourism, Japan, circumpolar, China, Heritage, and Inuit."
Inuit Graburn's Ph.D. was based on materials gathered in 1959 in the
Inuit hamlet of
Salluit, then known as, Sugluk, in Quebec, Canada, on Sugluk Inlet near
Hudson Strait. He had fellowships from McGill-Carnegie Arctic Institute and
Canada Council. The next year he spent three months in
Kimmirut, then known as Lake Harbour,
Baffin Island continuing his research with the Inuit. The data from the Sugluk fieldwork was the basis for his MA. The data from both field trips was also submitted as reports in 1960 and 1963 to the Canadian Government as part of the newly formed Northern Coordination and Research Centre. These reports were cited in the "Qikiqtani Truth Commission Community Histories 1950–1975". In the 1960s he had a visiting appointment with the
National Museum of Civilization in
Ottawa, Canada. One of his first books was
Eskimos without Igloos which was published in 1969. By the early 2000s, he focused his research on contemporary Inuit arts which included "urban Inuit" artists. Graburn collaborated with Avataq, in Nunavik, an Inuit cultural organization. He also worked with Inuit institutions in
Iqaluit, Nunavut "on aspects of cultural preservation and autonomy". ==Japan==