SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Teaching

Research

I have a long-term interest in the ethnography of Maluku, eastern Indonesia, especially issues relating to local forms of authority, community politics, and relations between people and state bodies in a peripheral region. My doctoral thesis concentrated on Indonesian migrant organisations in Sydney, Australia, and includes work with migrants from Maluku both during and after the conflict which began in 1999. The thesis as a whole looks at the constitution, function and identity of several associations formed by Indonesian migrants in Sydney. It asks how these organisations help their members negotiate between the twin gravities of ongoing adherence to Indonesian national rhetoric and bureaucratic practice, and the demands of living in multicultural Australia. It considers the relationship between Indonesian citizens (and ex-citizens) and the consular and diplomatic authorities in Australia, as outposts of the Indonesian state. I suggest that a more informed approach to migrant ‘micro-politics’ requires an understanding of the relationship between organisational structure and forms of national and regional belonging.

My interest in migrant ‘micro-politics’ has led me to examine in more detail the political, economic and cultural significance of festivals to migrant populations. This work draws on fieldwork among Indonesians in Sydney, and Bengalis in the Brick Lane area of East London. In particular, I have been focusing recently on the role of food in these and related events, as a vehicle for cultural expression and exchange as well as an important economic asset.

Publications

• 2008 ‘Strange People but they Sure Can Cook! An Indonesian Women’s Group in Sydney’, Food, Culture and Society 11(2):173-189.
• 2005 ‘Revisiting centre and periphery: Maluku in the world’, Masyarakat Indonesia 31(1): 113-125.
• 2003 (with Rachel Wrangham) ‘The environment at the periphery: conflicting discourses on the forest in Tanimbar, Eastern Indonesia’, in David G. Anderson and Eeva Berglund (eds.), Ethnographies of Conservation: Environmentalism and the Distribution of Privilege, Oxford: Berghahn, pp.51-66.
• 2002 Enabling Fictions: Politics, Representation, and the Environment in Maluku, Indonesia, Goldsmiths Anthropology Research Paper No. 5.
• 2002 Indonesia: Country Profile, Oxford: Oxfam GB.

Publications