Matthew Wolf

Matthew Wolf‑Meyer is an American anthropologist whose scholarly work bridges science and technology studies, bioethics, and disability studies. Born on July 19, 1976 in Warren, Michigan, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota before embarking on a distinguished academic career. His early appointments included a brief stint as an assistant professor of anthropology at Wayne State University (2007‑2008), followed by a longer tenure at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he progressed from assistant to associate professor between 2008 and 2015. Since then, Wolf‑Meyer has been an associate professor at Binghamton University, and from 2021 to 2023 he served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Tampere University in Finland. His research is noted for employing post‑structuralist and affect theory—especially the ideas of Gilles De Deleuze and Félix Guattari—to challenge conventional notions of disability, impairment, and medicalization, proposing anti‑reductive frameworks that reconceptualize human variation and affective bioethics.

Wolf‑Meyer’s prolific output includes three influential monographs: The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine and Modern American Life (2012), which earned the Society for Medical Anthropology’s New Millennium Book Award; Theory for the World to Come: Speculative Fiction and Apocalyptic Anthropology (2019); and Unraveling: Remaking Personhood in a Neurodiverse Age (2020). His work has been featured in high‑profile venues such as The New Yorker and the Los Angeles Review of Books, underscoring his impact across both academic and popular audiences. By weaving together critical theory, empirical research, and imaginative speculation, Wolf‑Meyer continues to shape contemporary debates about the biology of everyday life and the ethics of neurodiversity.