Dr. Tsing is a cultural anthropologist. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1973, and her MA and PhD from Stanford University in 1976 and 1984, respectively. Following her graduate work, she taught as a visiting professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Since 1989 she has taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she holds the rank of full professor. She has also held visiting professor positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and Aarhus University in Denmark. 

A specialist in Southeast Asia, Tsing’s first book, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen examines the Meratus Dayak, a marginalized group in a remote and tropical area of Indonesia. It received the Henry J. Bendus Prize from the Southeast Asia Council of the Association of Asian Studies and was an honorable mention for the Victor Turner prize in ethnographic writing. Her second work, Friction, won the Senior Book Award from the American ethnological society. This work focuses on global engagement in Indonesian rainforests, particularly around environmental issues and industrial forest development.

The Mushroom At the End of the World won the of the 2016 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing and the 2016 Gregory Bateson Prize and was a finalist for the 2016 Northern California Book Awards in General Nonfiction.