Timothy P. Daniels

Timothy P. Daniels, associate professor of anthropology at Hofstra, knew as a teenager that he wanted to become an anthropologist. Growing up in Buffalo, New York, he was introduced to anthropology as a high school student. Today, Professor Daniels’ research focuses on Islam, politics, economics, religious discourse, performance and popular culture in Southeast Asia.

He earned a B.A. in anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has conducted research as a Fulbright scholar and Wenner-Gren fellow in Malaysia and Indonesia. He is the author of Building Cultural Nationalism in Malaysia: Identity, Representation, and Citizenship (Routledge, 2005), and Islamic Spectrum in Java (Ashgate Ltd., 2009), which won the Lawrence A. Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication at Hofstra University. Dr. Daniels is also the author of several journal articles on cultural festivals, urban space, and cultural politics.

Dr. Daniels joined the Hofstra faculty in fall 2005. Academia, he says, allows him to share his original research and field experiences with his students, hoping to ignite their interests in anthropology.

When not traveling back and forth to Southeast Asia, Dr. Daniels spends much of his free time playing chess. He earned the title Life Master from the United States Chess Federation in 1991 and remains an avid player of this “mental sport.”

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Hofstra Horizons Articles

• Spring 2012: "Economics and Ethics in Kelantan, Malaysia