Trained in Anthropology, he has published on topics including post-socialism, neoliberalism, infrastructure, social welfare, and, in a new project, contemporary security. He is the co-editor (with Aihwa Ong) of Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (Blackwell, 2004) and (with Andrew Lakoff) of Biosecurity Interventions (Columbia University Press, 2008). He is currently working on book manuscript on urbanism and neoliberal reform in post-Soviet Russia and on the genealogy of vital systems security.