Dorinne K. Kondo is a professor of American studies and Ethnicity and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She is a scholar, playwright, and has over 20 years of work experience in dramaturge; her work shows the structural inequality of race and ethnicities in the world of contemporary theatre. Her writings discuss issues on power, gender inequality, the discourses in a Japanese workplace, and racism in the fashion industry.
Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, Princess Royal is a member of the Thai royal family. She is the second daughter of King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit, and the younger sister of Maha Vajiralongkorn.
Arjun Appadurai is an Indian-American anthropologist who has been recognized as a major theorist in globalization studies. In his anthropological work, he discusses the importance of the modernity of nation-states and globalization. He is the former professor of anthropology and South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, Humanities Dean at the University of Chicago, director of the Center on Cities and Globalization at Yale University, provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at The New School, and professor of education and human development studies at New York University's Steinhardt School. He is currently professor emeritus of the Media, Culture, and Communication Department in the Steinhardt School.
Veena Das, FBA in India is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. Her areas of theoretical specialisation include the anthropology of violence, social suffering, and the state. Das has received multiple international awards including the Ander Retzius Gold Medal, delivered the prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture and was named a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Pesantren is a traditional Islamic boarding school in Indonesia. It is taught either in private houses, a pondok or a mosque, the teaching includes classical Islamic texts and santri thought, taught by kyais. According to one popular tradition, the pesantren education system originated from traditional Javanese pondokan, dormitories, ashrams for Hindus or viharas for Buddhists to learn religious philosophies, martial arts, and meditation. Institutions much like them are found across the Islamic world and are called pondok in Malaysia, Southern Thailand and madrasas in India and Pakistan and much of the Arabic-speaking world. The pesantren aims to deepen knowledge of the Quran, particularly through the study of Arabic, traditions of exegesis, the Sayings of the Prophet, law and logic. The term pesantren derives from the root word santri or student -- pe-santri-an or the place of the santri.
Saba Mahmood (1961–2018) was professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she was also affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her scholarly work straddled debates in anthropology and political theory, with a focus on Muslim majority societies of the Middle East and South Asia. Mahmood made major theoretical contributions to rethinking the relationship between ethics and politics, religion and secularism, freedom and submission, and reason and embodiment. Influenced by the work of Talal Asad, she wrote on issues of gender, religious politics, secularism, and Muslim and non-Muslim relations in the Middle East.
Education in the Indian subcontinent began with the teaching of traditional subjects, including Indian religions, mathematics, and logic. Early Hindu and Buddhist centers of learning, such as the ancient Takshashila, Nalanda, Mithila, Vikramshila, Telhara, and Shaunaka Mahashala in the Naimisharanya forest, served as key sites for education. Islamic education became prominent with the establishment of Islamic empires in the region during the Middle Ages. Later, Europeans introduced Western education during the colonial period in India.
Sherry Beth Ortner is an American cultural anthropologist and has been a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA since 2004.
Lila Abu-Lughod is an American anthropologist. She is the Joseph L. Buttenweiser Professor of Social Science in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University in New York City. She specializes in ethnographic research in the Arab world, and her seven books cover topics including sentiment and poetry, nationalism and media, gender politics and the politics of memory.
Ruth Landes was an American cultural anthropologist best known for studies on the Brazilian religion of Candomblé and her published study on the topic, City of Women (1947). Landes is recognized by some as a pioneer in the study of race and gender relations.
The Kravis Prize or Henry R. Kravis Prize in Nonprofit Leadership is a philanthropic award for leaders in the nonprofit sector. According to Bloomberg News, the prize "honor[s] those who have demonstrated 'bold leadership' in the nonprofit sector and have shared their best practices with others."
Cynthia Ann Humes is a professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College, in Claremont, California. The college lists her research interests as: History of Hinduism in America, Modern Hindu Goddess Worship, and Gender and Religion. She is also an author, the college's Chief Technology Officer and a Commissioner on the Claremont City Planning Commission.
Susan Hogan is a British cultural historian. Hogan is Professor in Cultural Studies & Art Therapy at the University of Derby.
Karen McCarthy Brown was an anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of religion. She is best known for her groundbreaking book Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, which made great strides in destigmatizing Haitian Vodou. Until her retirement in 2009 due to illness, McCarthy Brown was a Professor of Anthropology at Drew University. At Drew University, McCarthy Brown was the first woman in the Theological School to receive tenure and to achieve the rank of full professor.
Ernestine Friedl was an American anthropologist, author, and professor. She served as the president of both the American Ethnological Society (1967) and the American Anthropological Association (1974–1975). Friedl was also the first Dean of Arts and Sciences and Trinity College at Duke University, and was a James B. Duke Professor Emerita. A building on Duke's campus, housing the departments of African and African American Studies, Cultural Anthropology, the Latino/Latina Studies program, and Literature was named in her honor in 2008. Her major interests included gender roles, rural life in modern Greece, and the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin.
Deepak Shimkhada is a Nepalese-American with a diverse professional background, including work as an Asian art historian, educator, writer, editor, and painter. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, and has previously held visiting and adjunct positions at several U.S. universities, including Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University, California State University, Northridge, University of the West, and Claremont School of Theology. His teaching career began in 1980, and while he has retired from full-time teaching, he continues to teach Asian art part-time at Chaffey College.
Gloria Goodwin Raheja is American anthropologist who specializes in ethnographic history. She is the author of several historical works where she explores the concepts of caste and gender in India, colonialism, politics of representation, blues music, capitalism in the Appalachia and other diverse topics. Raheja argues that caste stratification in India was influenced by British colonialism. Monographs on ethnographic history and India have been considered "acclaimed" by the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Suzanne Kessler is an American social psychologist known for the application of ethnomethodology to gender. She and Wendy McKenna pioneered this application of ethnomethodology to the study of gender and sex with their groundbreaking work, Gender an Ethnomethodological Approach. Twenty years later, Kessler extended this work in a second book, Lessons from the Intersexed.
Zoe Caroline Brettell is a Canadian cultural anthropologist known for her scholarship on migration and gender. She is currently Professor Emerita at Southern Methodist University, where she was previously University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor. At SMU, Brettell served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology, interim Dean of the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and inaugural Director of the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute. She has also been President of both the Society for the Anthropology of Europe (1996–1998) and the Social Science History Association (2000–2001).
Susan Snow Wadley is an American anthropologist.
