Kathleen M. Adams

Kathleen M. Adams is a cultural anthropologist and Professor at Loyola University Chicago,[1] and an Adjunct Curator at the Field Museum of Natural History. Her books include Art as Politics: Re-crafting Identities, Tourism and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia, Everyday Life in Southeast Asia (With K. Gillogly), Indonesia: History, Heritage, Culture, Home and Hegemony: Domestic Service and Identity Politics in South and Southeast Asia (with S. Dickey), and The Ethnography of Tourism: Edward Bruner and Beyond (with N. Leite and Q. Casteneda). Adams is best known for her research on cultural transformations in island Southeast Asia, especially Toraja society in Indonesia), and her contributions to critical tourism studies, heritage studies, and museum studies.

A former Fulbright recipient,[2] Adams received a B.A. in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an M.A./Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at the University of Washington. Adams previously held the Mouat Family Endowed Chair for Junior Faculty [3] at Beloit College in Wisconsin, and was visiting professor at Loyola University Chicago's John Felice Rome Center, Ateneo de Manila University, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, the National University of Singapore and on several University of Virginia Semester at Sea voyages.[4]

Adams' book on the politics of art and tourism in Sulawesi (Indonesia)[5] won the Alpha Sigma Nu award as the best social science book published in 2007–2009 by faculty at Jesuit institutions.[6] A past Fulbright awardee (1984–85) and Isaac Manasseh Meyer Fellowship (1999) recipient, Adams' work has been supported by the American Philosophical Society and other foundations. She received Loyola University's 2016 Sujack Master Researcher Award,[7] Loyola University Chicago's 2007 Sujack Award for Teaching Excellence, and recognition by Princeton Review as one of the "300 best professors" in the US and Canada in 2012.[8]