Charles F. Keyes

Charles Keyes, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Studies at the University of Washington and past-president of the Association for Asian Studies, has since the early 1960s carried out extensive research in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia on Buddhism and modernity, ethnicity and national cultures, and culture and ‘development’. He has been on the faculty of the University of Washington since 1965 and since then has served at this institution as chair of the department of anthropology (1985-1990, and 2007) and director of the center for Southeast Asian Studies (1986-1997). He has also been a visiting professor at Chiang Mai and Mahasarakham universities in Thailand, Copenhagen University in Denmark, Gothenburg University in Sweden, the University of California in Los Angeles, and the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan.

Professor Keyes has authored, edited or co-edited 14 books, monographs or special issues of journals and published over 80 articles. His published work includes

• Isan: Regionalism in Northeastern Thailand (1967, in Thai translation, 2009, On the Margins of Asia: Diversity in Asian States (ed., 2006)
• Cultural Crisis and Social Memory: Modernity and Identity in Thailand and Laos (edited with Shigeharu Tanabe, 2002)
•  The Golden Peninsula: Culture and Adaptation in Mainland Southeast Asia (reprinted, 1995)
•  Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia (edited with Laurel Kendall and Helen Hardacre, 1994)
•  “Northeastern Thai Ethnoregionalism Updated,” in Anthropological Traces: Thailand and the Work of Andrew Turton., ed. by Nicholas Tapp (in preparation)
•  “Buddhism, Human Rights, and Non-Buddhist Minorities,” in Religion and the Global Politics of Human Rights ed. by Tom Banchoff and Robert Wuthnow (in press)
•  “Ethnicity and the Nation-States of Thailand and Vietnam,” in Integration, Marginalization and Resistance: Ethnic Minorities of the Greater Mekong Subregion, edited by Prasit Leepreecha, Kwanchewan Buadaeng and Don McCaskill (2008)
•  “Monks, Guns and Peace: Theravada Buddhism and Political Violence,” in Belief and Bloodshed, edited by James Wellman (2007)
•  “‘The Peoples of Asia’: Science and Politics in Ethnic Classification in Thailand, China and Vietnam,” Journal of Asian Studies (2002).

In 2003 he was given the Graduate Mentoring award by the University of Washington in recognition for his work supervising the PhD committees of 41 students and 20 MA students (nearly a third of whom have come from Thailand and Vietnam). He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and honors, including an honorary PhD from Mahasarakham University in Thailand in 2004. He was also selected as a keynote speaker at three International Thai Studies Conferences (Amsterdam 1999; Nakhon Phanom, Thailand 2003; and Bangkok 2008), and as the David Skomp distinguished lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Indiana (2001).