Thomas Baudinette is Senior Lecturer in Japanese and International Studies in the Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Languages and Literatures at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.
Dr Thomas Baudinette is a cultural anthropologist whose work has explored consumption of popular culture among queer communities in Japan, Mainland China, Thailand, and the Philippines. He has a particular interest in the transnational spread of Japanese queer popular culture and its impacts on conceptualisations of gender and sexuality. He also investigates K-pop fandom in Japan and Australia.
Thomas’s work is united by a commitment to digital research methods, ethnographic practice and the study of the lived experiences of media use in everyday life. Recently, he has begun exploring the nexus of East and Southeast Asian popular culture, especially the development of pan-Asian “idol” celebrity and related fan cultures.
Thomas is the author of Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo (University of Michigan Press, 2021). You can learn more about his ethnographic study of the Japanese gay media landscape and changing notions of gender and sexuality in neoliberal Japan here.
Thomas is also the author of Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2023) and is considered one of the foremost authorities of Boys Love media cultures across Asia. You can learn more about his work on this increasingly transnational form of queer media here.
Thomas is fluent in English, Japanese, and French. He has intermediate Thai and Korean, and conversational Chinese .
His current research projects include:
–the development of “series wai” or “Thai Boys Love”, including:
- its transnational fandom culture and relationships to queer communities
- shifts in Thai celebrity culture and its relationship to inter-Asian media flows
-the study of Korean popular culture fandom among LGBTQ+ fans:
- the role of K-pop fandom as a space of support for fans from the LGBTQ+ community
- K-pop fan activities as queer practices, particularly among fans in Anglophone contexts
-the male idol industry in Japan, including:
- the development of male idol fandom as a feminist space across recent Japanese history
- the role of the Japanese male idol production in shaping queer experiences across East Asia
Details about his teaching philosophy can be found here.
Thomas’ institutional homepage may be accessed here, as well as a list of his publications and media outreach.
Thomas Baudinette 