Tom Boellstorff

Tom Boellstorff (Ph.D., Anthropology, Stanford, 2000) is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine; from 2007–2012 he was Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. His research projects have focused on questions of virtual worlds, sexuality, globalization, nationalism, language, and HIV/AIDS. He is the author of The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2005), winner of the 2005 Ruth Benedict Award from the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists; A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2007); and Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, 2008), winner of the Media Ecology Association’s 2009 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Culture, and Honorable Mention for the 2008 PROSE Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in Media and Cultural Studies, Association of American Publishers. He is also the coauthor of Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: a Handbook of Method (Princeton University Press, 2012), co-editor of Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language (University of Illinois Press, 2004), co-editor of a theme issue of Ethnos, “Bodies of Emotion: Rethinking Culture and Emotion through Southeast Asia” (Volume 69:4, 2004) and co-editor of a theme issue of Anthropological Forum, “East Indies/West Indies: Comparative Archipelagos” (Volume 16:3, 2006). With Bill Maurer, he is Series Editor for the Princeton Studies in Culture and Technology (Princeton University Press).

He is the author of publications in many edited volumes and a range of journals, including American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist (twice), Cultural Anthropology (twice), Annual Review of Anthropology, Journal of Asian Studies, Law and Society Review, PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Games and Culture, and GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (three times). He is also a Core Faculty member for the Culture and Theory Ph.D. program at Irvine. He has worked as a consultant for the Intel Corporation, and  sits on the advisory boards of two community-based HIV/AIDS organizations in Indonesia.