Biography
I am a social anthropologist and Tunku Abdul Rahman University Associate Professor in Malay World Studies. I obtained my PhD from Cambridge in 2007, and taught at Brunel University London for ten years before taking up this new position in 2021. I have long-term research interests in Malaysian Borneo, where I have explored conversion to Christianity, ethnic politics and experiences of development and resettlement among Bidayuh communities. My current research centres on the more-than-human politics, socialities and aesthetics of orangutan conservation in the ‘age of the Anthropocene’. As part of this work, I enjoy working across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries through collaborations with conservationists and public engagement.
Research
I have worked in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, since 2003. My PhD and early postdoctoral research centred on conversion to Christianity and ethnic and cultural politics among rural Bidayuh communities, while a second postdoctoral project entailed the study of landscape, morality and development in the context of a dam-construction and resettlement project in which four Bidayuh villages were entangled. My fieldwork in Sarawak drew me to my current research on the social, political, aesthetic and affective dimensions of the global nexus of orangutan conservation in the so-called 'age of the Anthropocene'. I explore these issues with a small team of doctoral students and postdocs via two projects:
1) POKOK: an anthropology-conservation collaboration (2017-2022) that investigates the causes and contexts of orangutan killing and human/orangutan conflict in rural Borneo and seeks to devise conservation strategies for mitigating this problem and engaging more constructively and ethically with local communities.
3) Refiguring Conservation in/for 'the Anthropocene': the Global Lives of the Orangutan (GLO). A multi-sited ethnography of the global nexus of orangutan conservation in the context of emerging 'Anthropocenic' ontologies, politics, socialities and discourses. This European Research Council-funded project (2018-2023) has two key aims: to explore if and how global conservation is 'scaling up' to meet the challenges of 'the Anthropocene'; and to cut the Anthropocene concept down to size by examining how it is apprehended, fragmented and reworked in multiple ethnographic settings.
These ethnographic foci have evolved in tandem with my other long-running research interests in theories of visuality and materiality, more-than-human socialities, indigenous museology, and the histories and politics of anthropological knowledge practices.
Engagement beyond anthropology and the academy is an important part of my research programme. Currently, I work with conservationists and conservation scientists through my research projects and involvement with Oryx: International Journal of Conservation, Conservation and Society, and the Section for Human-Primate Interactions (IUCN Primate Specialist Group). I am also committed to making anthropology more accessible and interesting to the general public. Please see my ‘other publications’ below.
Research interests
Religious conversion; Christianity; ethnic politics; indigeneity; development; resettlement; environmental transformations; biodiversity conservation; human-animal relations and multispecies ethnography; ‘the Anthropocene’; anthropology’s histories and knowledge practices; material and visual anthropology
Publications
2018
2013
2012
2022
Doi: 10.1086/722300
2021 (Accepted for publication)
Doi: 10.1111/amet.13045
2021
Doi: 10.3167/cja.2021.390108
Doi: 10.3167/cja.2021.390102
2020
Doi: 10.4000/terrain.20371
Doi: 10.7717/peerj.10283
Doi: 10.1002/pan3.10072
Doi: 10.1002/ocea.5258
2018 (Accepted for publication)
Doi: 10.29164/19anthro
2018
Doi: 10.1111/1467-8322.12432
Doi: 10.1353/anq.2018.0043
2016
Doi: 10.1080/00141844.2014.986152
2015
Doi: 10.14318/hau5.1.016
Doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.12254
2012
Doi: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01378.x
2011
Doi: 10.3167/sa.2011.550301
2009
Doi: 10.1080/00664670802695608
Doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2009.01556.x
2007
Doi: 10.1080/00141840701387937
2022 (No publication date)
2021
2020
2022
Doi: 10.17863/CAM.86774
2019
Doi: http://doi.org/10.29164/19anthro
Teaching and Supervisions
Undergrdauate Teaching
Paper SAN2: The foundations of social life: Anthropology and Religion
Postgraduate Teaching
MPhil in Social Anthropology - Paper MP2: Systems of Power and Knowledge
MPhil Social Anthropological Research - Core seminars
Postgraduate Supervision
Anna Stępień (Brunel University)
Paul Hasan Thung (Brunel University)