Eric Haanstad

Director of Undergraduate Studies
Associate Professor of the Practice
Faculty Fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, Faculty Fellow at the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies

Education

B.A., University of Minnesota, 1996
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2001
Ph.D., Ibid., 2008

Research and Teaching Interests

Police, media, temporality, violence, theater, performative ethnography, design anthropology, symbology, Thailand, Cambodia, Southeast Asia.

Biography

Eric Haanstad began exploring anthropology at the University of Minnesota where he studied Anishinaabe Ojibwe (Chippewa) languages and cultures in American Indian Studies. He received a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in August of 2008 and since then taught and conducted research in Cambodia, Thailand, Germany, and the U.S. Seacoast. He is publishing a book, To Protect and Suppress: Order and Spectacle in the Year of the Thai Police, focusing on his research with the Royal Thai Police. In addition to his work on state security, he studies music production, symbolic expression, and theatrical performance in Southeast Asia. Eric’s current ethnographic projects explore future imaginaries in predictive security, design anthropology, and his ongoing musical and theatrical collaborations with Ramayana-based masked theater performers in Thailand and Cambodia.