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Biography

Seth Palmer is a socio-cultural anthropologist whose transdisciplinary work engages religious publics and emergent political imaginaries in Madagascar and the broader Afro-Indian Ocean world. Broadly speaking, Dr. Palmer's scholarship attends to the uncanny ways in which collective turns towards the past ― as in concerns over ancestrality and “tradition” ― lie at the heart of various future-oriented political aspirations. His/their book manuscript project considers how spirit possession and its social networks act as a central conduit for the transnational projects of HIV-prevention and queer rights activism in Madagascar. The work principally intervenes in the literature on global LGBT rights activism and religiosity by troubling the assumption that their relationship is inherently antagonistic. Dr. Palmer's current research interests include religio-political conflict at royal spirit shrines, burgeoning communities of Malagasy Jiosy “Jews,” and the afterlives of French colonial and early nationalist racialization processes across the island.