Thomas Reuter

Country:

Federal Republic of Germany

WAAS Designation:

Fellow

Primary Position & Institution:

Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia; Trustee, WAAS

Short Bio:

Prof Thomas Reuter was born in Germany in 1961 and migrated to Australia in 1981. After BA studies at the University of Melbourne (UoM), he obtained a PhD from the Australian National University in 1997. He first taught at Heidelberg University in his native Germany, before taking up post-doctoral and QE-II Fellowships at UoM, a Research Fellowship at Monash University, and an ARC Future Fellowship back at UoM. He is currently a Professor in Asian Anthropology at UoM’s Asia Institute. He was President of the Australian Anthropological Association (2002-2005), executive member and chair of the World Council of Anthropological Associations (2004/2008-2012), Senior Vice-President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (2008-2018), and has been a leading figure in the internationalisation of his discipline. He then was elected to the executive of the International Social Science Council (2013-2018), as it merged with ICSU to form the new International Science Council (ISC). He has served as an expert advisor to IPCC, IPBES, WSDR, UNESCO and several national governments. He is currently a member of the board of WAAS and also of Future Earth (Asia Regional Center), as well as a fellow of the European Academy of Science (EASA) and Academia Europaea (EA). Twenty-five years of research in Asia (Indonesia) have focused on indigenous people, social movements, religious change, political and economic elites, ecology, climate change, food security, and globalisation. Prof Reuter has published fifteen books and over 150 articles.