Timothy Y. Loh is a sociocultural anthropologist. Bringing together medical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and science and technology studies, his ethnographic research examines sociality, language, and religion in deaf and signing worlds spanning Jordan, Singapore, and the United States.
His current book project, provisionally entitled “Assistive Modernity: Deafness and Technology in Contemporary Jordan,” explores how “assistive” technologies for deaf people in Jordan, like cochlear implants and sign language-centered mobile applications, have shaped and continue to shape disability’s contours and manifestations in the Arabic-speaking Middle East/Southwest Asia. The production and proliferation of these technologies reveal competing perceptions of what it means to be a deaf person in Jordan today. The book project builds on his dissertation to examine how varying understandings of modernity get embedded in assistive technologies and, conversely, how such technologies become instantiations of various modernities. Loh is from Singapore, where he has begun another project examining the disenfranchisement of deaf people and sign language in an ostensibly multiethnic and multicultural state.
His writing has been published in Medical Anthropology, SAPIENS Anthropology Magazine, and Somatosphere, and is forthcoming in American Anthropologist. His research has won awards from multiple organizations, including the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and the Middle East Studies Association, and has received support from the Social Science Research Council, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation, and the American Center of Research (ACOR) Jordan, among others.
Loh earned a Ph.D. and an S.M. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He holds a B.S. in Foreign Service (Culture and Politics) and an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. Before the doctorate, Loh worked in humanitarian assistance and secondary education in Jordan and Lebanon. .
