Robert is a sociologist interested in gender, sexuality, and social change in the developing world. Robert received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Women & Gender Studies and the International Affairs Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. Robert’s award-winning first book, AIDS and Masculinity in the African City: Privilege, Inequality, and Modern Manhood, was published by University of California Press in 2016. Based on a decade of fieldwork in a slum community in Kampala Uganda, this book is the first to examine how the AIDS epidemic has shaped masculinity in Africa. Robert’s current research examines the impact of Chinese development assistance in Uganda and is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Prior to joining the CU faculty, he was an Assistant Professor in the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Michigan and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.