Thomas Blom Hansen (born 22 January 1958) is a Danish anthropologist and leading contemporary commentator on religious and political violence in India. He has worked on religious identities, local political organization and informal networks in Bombay and pursued an interest in the anthropology of politics, the postcolonial state and sovereignty. More recently he has done research on religious revival and the everyday meanings of freedom and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa. Hansen is part of an international research network entitled “The Religious Lives of Migrants,” funded by the Ford Foundation and the Social Science Research Council in New York, which explores religious meanings and institutions among international migrants in a global and comparative perspective.

Hansen has held academic positions at Yale University, University of Edinburgh, University of Natal (Durban), Roskilde University (Denmark), and Copenhagen University. He was formerly Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Senior Research Scientist at Yale University, Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam where he served as Dean of the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences. Hansen is now the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor in South Asian Studies and Professor in Anthropology at Stanford University. He also serves as Director of Stanford's Center for South Asia.