Thomas Blom Hansen

Thomas Blom Hansen was appointed professor of anthropology at the University of Amsterdam in 2006. He has previously held positions at Yale University, University of Edinburgh, University of Natal (Durban), and Roskilde University (Denmark) and Copenhagen University. He is currently appointed Senior Research Scientist at Yale University, and Visiting Professor at University of Edinburgh.

He has worked on religious and political violence in India, as well as religious identities, local political organization and informal networks in Bombay. He has also pursued an interest in the anthropology of politics, the postcolonial state and sovereignty. More recently he has done research on religious revival and the everyday meanings of freedom and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa. He is currently finishing a book entitled "Melancholia of Freedom. Anxieties and nostalgia in a South African township." He has a longstanding interest in urban anthropology and is currently co-editing a volume with Oskar Verkaaik entitled "Urban Charisma".

He is also involved in a international research network entitled "The Religious Lives of Migrants" which explores religious meanings and institutions among international migrants in a global and comparative perspective. This network is funded by the Ford Foundation and the Social Science Research Council in New York.

His publications include The Saffron Wave. Democracy and Hindu nationalism in Modern India (Princeton 1999); Wages of Violence. Naming and identity in postcolonial Bombay (Princeton 2001). He has co-edited a number of volumes with Finn Stepputat, most recently States of Imagination. Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State (Duke University Press 2001) and Sovereign Bodies. Citizens, Migrants and states in the postcolonial world (Princeton 2005)