Townsend Middleton is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies political culture in South Asia, where he engages a wide range of contemporary and historical concerns. Middleton’s most recent book, Quinine’s Remains: Empire’s Medicine and the Life Thereafter (University of California Press, 2024), explores the history and afterlives of the antimalarial quinine in India. His first book, The Demands of Recognition: State Anthropology and Ethnopolitics in Darjeeling (Stanford University Press, 2015), examined the politics of autonomy, tribal recognition, and affirmative action in India. His co-edited projects include the book Darjeeling Reconsidered: Histories, Environments, Politics (Oxford University Press India, 2018). Currently, Middleton co-edits Limn and is the president of Limn Press, a scholar-led 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Middleton’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, Fulbright, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and numerous other sources. His essays have appeared in journals such as American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Ethnos, Ethnography, Political Geography, and Public Culture.
In addition to his service and teaching in UNC’s Anthropology Department, Prof. Middleton is:
- Joint-Adjunct Faculty, UNC Curriculum for Global Studies
- Faculty Fellow, UNC Center for Urban and Regional Studies
- Faculty Fellow, UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities
Townsend Middleton 