Tom Boellstorff earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at Stanford University in 2000. He joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine in 2002, receiving tenure in 2006. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. He was formerly Co-chair of the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists and recipient of a Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

Raised in Nebraska, Boellstorff moved to California to obtain bachelor's degrees in linguistics and music from Stanford University. He engaged in HIV/AIDS and LGBT activism in the United States, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia, at times with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the Institute for Community Health Outreach, where he worked as Regional Coordinator before entering graduate school in anthropology. His partner, Bill Maurer, is also in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.

• An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, April 2008)
• Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2007)
• Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2005)

He is also the co-editor of Speaking in Queer Tongues: Globalization and Gay Language (University of Illinois Press, 2004).

His work has been published in American Anthropologist; American Ethnologist; Cultural Anthropology; the Annual Review of Anthropology, the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology; the Journal of Asian Studies; A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies; and Ethnos.