Strong is Thomas Strong, visiting university lecturer in the department of
social and cultural anthropology at the University of Helsinki. He has
previously held research posts at the University of California, San
Francisco, the University of Wisconsin, and (oddly enough) the American
Academy of Ophthalmology. His publications include essays on the symbolism
of blood and body in the U.S. and elsewhere, new cross-disciplinary work on
kinship, and ideas of culture loss and bodily detumescence amongst the
Dano-speakers of Papua New Guinea\’s eastern highlands province. His
on-going research in PNG concerns transformations in sociality, gender
relations, and personhood following the mid-twentieth-century repudiation of
the traditional men\’s cult in the upper Asaro valley. His other interests
include \’brand\’ as an ethnographic and analytic concept, HIV/AIDS
(especially in the U.S. gay male community), and celebrity/fame.
