Tony Day grew up in Washington D.C., received a B.A. (cum laude) in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1967 and a PhD in Southeast Asian History from Cornell University in 1981. In 1967-1969 he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Calapan, Mindoro Oriental, the Philippines, and from 1978 to1998 he taught Southeast Asian and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. In 2004-2005 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University and a Fellow of the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. From 2006-2012 he was a part-time visiting professor of history at Wesleyan University, Middletown CT.
Tony Day’s publications include Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia (2002); Clearing a Space: Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature (2002), edited with Keith Foulcher; Identifying with Freedom: Indonesia after Suharto (ed., 2007); and Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia (2010), edited with Maya Liem. He is currently Regional Editor for South East Asia Research. In August 2013 he moved to Singapore with his wife and youngest son.