Thomas Blom Hansen is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He founded and directed Stanford's Center for South Asia from 2010 to 2017. He is an anthropologist of political life, ethno-religious identities, violence and urban life in South Asia and Southern Africa. He has multiple theoretical and disciplinary interests from political theory and continental philosophy to psychoanalysis, comparative religion and contemporary urbanism.