J. Michael Ryan, PhD, is associate professor of sociology at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He has previously held academic positions in Portugal, Egypt, Ecuador, and the United States of America. Before returning to academia, Dr. Ryan worked as a research methodologist at the National Center for Health Statistics in Washington, DC. He is the editor of Trans Lives in a Globalizing World: Rights, Identities, and Politics (Routledge 2020), Core Concepts in Sociology (Wiley 2019), and Gender in the Middle East and North Africa: Contemporary Issues and Challenges (Lynne-Rienner 2020).