Darryl Li

Darryl Li is an assistant professor of anthropology and associate member of the law school at the University of Chicago.

Li's research concerns people who cross regional boundaries to participate in military work but who don't fit conventional notions of soldiering, studying them through the lenses of empire, race, and migration. His first book, The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity, is a long-term ethnographic and archival study of "jihadist foreign fighters," with a focus on Arabs who participated in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. His writing has appeared in The Nation, Dissent, Al Jazeera English, Bidoun, The New Inquiry, Balkan Insight, Middle East Report, and other outlets.

Li has also participated in litigation arising out of the "War on Terror," including defense of captives held by the U.S. military at Guantánamo Bay. He is an attorney licensed in New York and Illinois.