Professor Spooner joined the faculty at University of Pennsylvania in 1968. He served as the Department of Anthropology's graduate chair 1985-8 and the University's Middle East Center Director from 1986-1995. He was Interim Co-Director of the Lauder Institute 2010 -2012, and is a Fellow at the Penn Institute of Urban Research and Affiliate Faculty at Penn's Graduate School of Education program on International Education Development.[2]
He has worked in Afghanistan,[3] northwest China, Iran,[4][5][6][7] India, Kazakhstan, Pakistan,[8] Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. His current research focuses on social change under globalization.
^Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and its neighbors, edited with Harold F. Schiffman, Leiden: Brill, 2012.
^Reading Nasta'liq: Persian and Urdu Hands 1500 to the Present, Costa Mesa CA: Mazda Publications, with William L. Hanaway, 1995, 2nd edition 2007.
^Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order, edited with William L. Hanaway, Museum Publications, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
^1990- Editor for anthropology articles in the Encyclopaedia Iranica.
^1986 Fesenjan and kashk: culture and metaculture. In Franciszek Machalski Memorial Volume, edited by Peter Chelkowski. Folia Orientalia 22 (1981-4):245-258. Cracow: Polish Academy of Science.
^1997-2005 Editor, Pakistan Studies News (PSN), the biannual newsletter of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies.