Lawrence Taylor is Senior Advisor to the President for International Affairs and the Professor of Anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM). A native New Yorker, he is a dual citizen of Ireland and the United States, with a PhD from Stony Brook University and many years teaching experience in Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Taylor came to NUIM in 1998 to take up the Headship of the Department of Anthropology and became Dean and then Vice President for International Affairs in 2008; since then he has also served as the Chair of the Irish Universities Association International Education Committee and represented the Universities on the Irish Government High Level Group on International Education. In this capacity, he has forged many partnerships between Maynooth and Canadian Universities, and was Henrietta Harvey visiting lecturer at Memorial University, Newfoundland in 2004.

Supported by grants from the US and Europe (NEH, APS, Norface, Government of Ireland) his books and articles on immigration (beginning with Dutchmen on the Bay), borders, and religion are based on field research in Ireland (Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics) and on the US/Mexico border – where he has collaborated with photographer Maeve Hickey (The Road to Mexico; Tunnel Kids; Ambos Nogales: Intimate Portraits of the US/Mexico Border). His current research is focused on the competing definitions of America being performed on the US/Mexico border – “moral geographies on the edge of America” – based on field excursions through the desert with all the “constituencies,” from Minute Men to migrant-aid organisations, to wilderness walkers, to Native American pilgrims.