Emmanuel David is an interdisciplinary scholar of gender, sexuality, and globalization. He is an associate professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he also serves as the co-director of the LGBTQ Studies Certificate Program. His recent research on gender and sexuality in the Philippines has focused on a wide range of topics, including global call centers, the politics of beauty pageants, sex work and militarism, and contemporary art and performance.  He is currently working on a book project about Christine Jorgensen’s performance tour across Asia and the Pacific in the early 1960s. This project was supported by a Residential Fellowship at the National Humanities Center.

He is also engaging in an artist-scholar collaboration with Yumi Janairo Roth focused on the untold history of the Filipino Rough Riders of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Their work We Are Coming will be featured in the MCA Denver’s Cowboy exhibition, on view from September 29, 2023 to February 18, 2024. 

His previous work focused on the gendered dimensions of disaster. He is author of Women of the Storm: Civic Activism after Hurricane Katrina (University of Illinois Press, 2017) and editor (with Elaine Enarson) of the interdisciplinary anthology The Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster (Vanderbilt University Press, 2012).

His scholarship has appeared in ASAP/Journal, Feminist Formations, Gender & Society, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Radical History Review, Sexualities, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly. 

At CU Boulder, he teaches Introduction to LGBT Studies; Women of Color & Activism; Gender, Race, and Class in a Global Context; Queer Theory; and Critical Inquiries in Transgender Studies. He is a recipient of CU Boulder's Best Should Teach Award for excellence in teaching.