Born in India and educated in the United States, Arjun Appadurai is a contemporary social theorist whose work centers around the ethnographic landscapes of modernity and globalization. He was formerly a professor at the University of Chicago, and some of his most important works include Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule (1981) and Modernity at Large (1996). After a brief time as administrator at Yale University, in 2004, Appadurai became Provost of New School University.