Andrew Willford

Andrew Willford is Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University and current Chair of Cornell’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). Prof. Willford's work characteristically explores psychological and phenomenological aspects of selfhood, identity, and subjectivity within a matrix of power and statecraft. His previous research has focused upon Tamil displacement, revivalism, and identity politics in Malaysia and India. Willford held the Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Chair Fellowship in 2022 and was based at the Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health in Chennai.

Andrew Willford's' current work focuses upon mental health and culture in both urban and rural India. A two-volume study, Modernity and Malevolence in the Psychiatric Clinic: Troubled Identities and Anxious Selves in South India; and Modernity and Malevolence in Rural India: Indigenous Hauntings and Community Healing in The Nilgiris is under review with an academic press.

Previous publications include, The Future of Bangalore’s Cosmopolitan Pasts: Civility and Difference in a Global City (University of Hawaii, 2018); Tamils and the Haunting of Justice: History and Recognition in Malaysia’s Plantations (University of Hawaii Press, 2014); Cage of Freedom: Tamil Identity and the Ethnic Fetish in Malaysia (University of Michigan Press, 2006); Spirited Politics: Religion and Public Life in Contemporary Southeast Asia, Andrew Willford and Kenneth George, eds. (Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2005); and Clio/Anthropos: Exploring the Boundaries between History and Anthropology, Andrew Willford and Eric Tagliacozzo, eds. (Stanford University Press, 2009).