Ilana Gershon

Ilana Gershon is Professor and Herbert S. Autrey Chair in the Department of Anthropology at Rice University, where she also serves as Director of Graduate Studies and Co-Director of the Program in Science and Technology Studies. Her office is located in Sewall Hall with regular Tuesday office hours.

Her research centers on two major theoretical projects: developing a framework for understanding multiple social orders and their porous boundaries, and analyzing neoliberalism as a distinct historical moment of capitalism. Key research areas include political/legal anthropology, linguistic/media anthropology, and the anthropology of work.

Gershon's work reveals trends across digital disconnection practices, corporate hiring rituals, pandemic workplace dynamics, and transnational migration. Her publications demonstrate consistent focus on how social boundaries form and dissolve across contexts from Samoan diaspora communities to corporate America.

• Wenner-Gren Foundation support
• Social Science Research Council (SSRC) funding
• National Science Foundation (NSF) funding
• Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellowship
• Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study fellowship

She directs the CaMP Anthropology blog and produces the APLA podcast on academic hiring rituals while organizing virtual reading groups for legal/political and linguistic/media anthropology scholars. Her current projects examine workplace governance as private government and the social implications of media technologies.