Robert W. Hefner

          Robert W. Hefner is Professor and Director of Graduate Admissions at the Department of Anthropology, and Associate Director of the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University, where he directs the program on Islam and civil society. Hefner has carried out research on religon and politics in Southeast Asia for the past twenty-eight years, and has conducted comparative research on Muslim culture and politics since the late-1980s. He is currently directing a project for the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs on "Madrasas, Modernity, and the Future of Muslim Higher Education." Earlier, he directed a multi-country, collaborative project on "Civil Democratic Islam, "also for the Pew Charitable Trusts, focusing on prospects and policies for civic pluralism and democracy in the Muslim world. During 1998-2001, Hefner directed a multisited, collaborative project for the Ford Foundation on "Southeast Asian Pluralisms: Social Resources for Civility and Participation in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia." Hefner has served as consultant on Muslim and Southeast Asian for government and no-governmental organizations, and is the invited editor for the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge Histoy of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800.

        Hefner has published more than a dozen books, as well as several major policy reports. His most recent published works are Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton 2000) and, as editor, Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton 2005). Other recent books include, as editor, The Politics of Multiculturalism: Pluralism and Citizenship in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia (Hawaii 2001), Democratic Civility: The History and Cross-Cultural Possibility of a Modern Political Ideal (Transaction 1998), Market Cultures: Society and Morality in the New Asian Capitalisms (Westview 1998), and, with Patricai Horvatich, Islam in an Era of Nation-States: Politics and Religious Renewal in Muslim Southeast Asia (Hawaii 1998). His early books included, Hindu Javanese: Tengger Tradition and Islam (Princton 1985) and The Political Economy of Mountain Java (California 1991). Four of his books have been translated into Indonesian.

       Hefner lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife, Nancy Smith-Hefner, an anthropological linguist and specialist of Indonesia and Cambodian-Americans, and his son, William Francisco Xavier. His daughter, Claire-Marie, is a specialist of Indian and Balinese dance, and studies South and Southeast Asian affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For Robert Hefner's curriculum vitae, click here

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