Michael Bosia

Michael Bosia focuses on the empowerment of communities facing the pressures of globalization and/or marginalization, with work on the politics of HIV/AIDS, sexual minorities and LGBT rights, and local food systems published in Globalizations,Perspectives on Politics, New Political Science, French Politics, Culture & Society, and five edited collections.  He has served as President of the Section on Sexuality and Politics and Program Chair for New Political Science at the American Political Science Association, and he is a founding member of the LGBTQA Caucus of the International Studies Association.

Recent publications include “Strange Fruit” in The Journal of Human Rights and the chapter “To Love or to Loathe” in Sexualities in World Politics.  Other recent publications include two edited volumes: with Meredith Weiss, Global Homophobia:  States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression(University of Illinois Press, 2013); and Globalization and Food Sovereignty: Global and Local Change in the New Politics of Food with Peter Andrée, Jeffrey Ayres, M. Bosia, and Marie-Josée Massicotte (University of Toronto Press).

His current book, State Homophobia and LGBT Activism, draws on field research in France, Uganda, and Egypt.  This project received financial support from his home institution and the American Political Science Association, and is under contract at Cambridge University Press.  He is also co-editing an Oxford University Press Handbook on Global LGBT Rights with Momin Rahman at Trent University and Sandra McEvoy at Wheelock College.

Prior to his academic career, Bosia served as staff to a California State Senator representing San Francisco and was part of early efforts toward a comprehensive state HIV/AIDS program.  He was also an organizer in the grassroots campaign to pass a domestic partnership ordinance in the City in 1990, the first successful popular vote on the issue.  Bosia lives in Vermont with his husband, Steven Obranovich, where the couple co-owned an innovative community supported restaurant (CSR) from 2008-2012.