Dr Carlo Bonura

Carlo Bonura is a Reader in Southeast Asian Politics. He received his PhD. from the University of Washington in political science, and his research spans the fields of comparative political thought and Southeast Asian politics.

Previously Dr. Bonura was a research project officer/associate with the Comparative Political Thought Project organised by the Centre for Political Ideologies in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford (2008-11).  He was also appointed the Luce Assistant Professor of Muslim Societies in Southeast Asia in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA (2003-2008).

Comparative political thought; Contemporary Islamic thought in Southeast Asia; Southeast Asian politics, particularly Thailand and Malaysia; Culture and politics.

Carlo Bonura’s current research focuses the diverse debates over Islamic conceptualisations of civil society and liberalism found in Malaysia and Indonesia. His research explores the active engagement within contemporary Southeast Asian Islamic thought with Islamic reformist thought, European theories of civil society, and the challenges of popular contestation over public religion, secularism and multiculturalism.  

More broadly, Dr. Bonura’s work examines the status of comparison as a concept within political theory. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Logics of Comparison: the Conceptualization of Islamic Civil Society and Comparative Political Thought. Dr. Bonura’s parallel research interests lie in the politics of Malay Muslim communities in southern Thailand and the ongoing political violence in the region.