J. Michael Ryan is currently a researcher for the TRANSRIGHTS Project at The University of Lisbon (Portugal). He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Maryland (USA). He was previously an assistant professor of sociology at The American University in Cairo (Egypt), a visiting lecturer of social theory at Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Quito, Ecuador and a lecturer at the University of Maryland (USA). Before returning to academia, Dr. Ryan worked as a research methodologist at the National Center for Health Statistics in Washington, D.C. He is the editor of Essential Concepts in Sociology (2018), and co-editor of Gender in the Contemporary Middle East (with Helen Rizzo, 2018), Sexualities in the Contemporary Middle East (with Helen Rizzo, 2018), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory (with Bryan Turner et. al., 2018), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies (with Daniel T. Cook, 2015), and The Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology (with George Ritzer, 2011). He has also served as advisory editor on The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies.