Peter A. Jackson is Emeritus Professor of Thai history and cultural studies in the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific. Over the past four decades, Prof. Jackson has written extensively on modern Thai cultural history, with special interests in the social and political history of Buddhism, magical cults and ritual, gender transformations and the emergence of gay, lesbian and transgender cultures in Asia. He has also undertaken comparative work in globalisation studies and critical theoretical approaches to historical and cultural studies of Asia. Prof. Jackson was editor-in-chief of Asian Studies Review, flagship journal of the Asian Studies Association of Australia, from 2009 to 2012 and was also a founding member of the editorial collective of Hong Kong University Press’s Queer Asia monograph series. He established the Thai Rainbow Archives Project, which was funded by the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme, to collect and digitise Thai gay, lesbian and transgender magazines and community organisation newsletters (https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP128). Since becoming ANU Emeritus Professor in 2016, he has held positions as Senior Research Fellow at the Yusof Ishak Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, and Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. He has also been Professeur Invité at the EHESS-CNRS-INALCO Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CASE) in Paris and the Maison des Sciences Humaines, Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains, Université Libre de Bruxelles. He currently holds an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant on the topic “Religion and Health in HIV-Affected Thai Communities: Buddhism and Healing Traditions as Cultural Resources for Thai Gay Men and Transgenders”.

Peter Jackson’s most recent books are “Capitalism Magic Thailand: Modernity with Enchantment” (2022 ISEAS Publishing), “Deities and Divas: Queer Ritual Specialists in Myanmar, Thailand and Beyond” with Benjamin Baumann (2022 NIAS Press), “Spirit Possession in Buddhist Southeast Asia: Worlds Ever More Enchanted” with Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière (2022 NIAS Press), and “Desiring Thai Men: Asian Gay Media and Transforming Masculinities” with Narupon Duangwises (2025 Cornell University Press).

Career Highlights

•Editor-in-Chief, Asian Studies Review (2009-2012)

•Founding Co-editor Hong Kong University Press Queer Asia series

•2011 Ruth Benedict Book Prize in the category “Outstanding Anthology” awarded for Queer Bangkok: 21^st Century Markets, Media, and Rights (Hong Kong University Press, 2011) by the American Anthropological Association’s Association for Queer Anthropology.

•The histories of Buddhism, gender, sexuality, and globalisation in Thailand

•Queer theory, postcolonial analysis, and critiques of Eurocentrism