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, forthcoming) 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:
-a study of the globalisation of queer Japanese popular culture, including:
- fandom for queer manga throughout the Asia-Pacific (with a focus on China and the Philippines )
- the development of “series wai” or “Thai Boys Love” media since 2014
-the study of Korean popular culture fandom in Japan and Australia, particularly focussing on:
- ethnographic study of K-pop fandom amongst queer individuals
- impacts of inter-Asian media flows on notions of Australianness among K-pop fans
Thomas is currently Secretary for the Society for Queer Asian Studies, an Affiliate of the Association of Asian Studies.
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 