Joshua Barker

Joshua Barker serves as Professor of Anthropology, Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, and Vice-Provost of Graduate Research and Education at the University of Toronto. His academic leadership spans institutional governance while maintaining active ethnographic research focused on power dynamics in Southeast Asian urban contexts, particularly Indonesia.

Education:

• B.A. from Trent University
• M.A. from SOAS, University of London
• Ph.D. from Cornell University

Professor Barker's research examines how violence, institutional structures, discourses, and technologies combine into apparatuses that structure human action while enabling value capture. His work bridges socio-cultural and linguistic anthropology through investigations of street-level authority, state-society relations, and infrastructural transformations. Key interests include urban anthropology in Indonesian slums, political dimensions of crime and policing, and cultural perspectives on media technology.

His 15 most recent publications reveal evolving engagement with platform economies, urban mobilities, and digital infrastructure. The corpus demonstrates consistent focus on Indonesia while expanding into comparative Southeast Asian frameworks, with increasing attention to material itineraries and technological embeddedness in everyday life.

Advising and Research Support: Professor Barker has mentored graduate students including Bronwyn Frey and Takanari Fujita. His current SSHRC and Connaught Foundation-funded project "Engineers and Political Dreams: Indonesia's Internet in Cultural Perspective" examines internet development through cultural anthropology lenses.

Collaborative initiatives include co-editing volumes like State of Authority: State in Society in Indonesia (2019) and special journal issues on urban transformations, reflecting active participation in scholarly networks across anthropology, Southeast Asian studies, and science and technology studies.