CV
PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Anthropology (expected June 2025)
PhD Minor, Science and Technology Studies
Dissertation: Indefinite Excisions: Forest management, rubber cultivation, and social hierarchies in Malaysia
MA University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Anthropology (2018-2020)
MSc Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore
Strategic Studies (2014-2016)
BA School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
Political Science and Hindi (2010-2014)
Study Abroad: American Institute of Indian Studies, Jaipur, India (2012-2013)
SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS
External
2024 Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Dissertation Fieldwork
Grant #10670
2023 National Science Foundation, Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant
#2240844
UW-Madison
2025 Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Center for Southeast Asian Studies
2023 Henry Anderson III Award, Global Health Institute
2022 Summer Scholar Award, Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center
2022 Graduate Student Research Award, Institute for Regional and International Studies
2022 Graduate Student Research Award, Global Health Institute
2022 Research Travel Grant, Center for Southeast Asian Studies
2021-2024 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Just Futures Initiative ‘Humanities Education for Anti-racist Literacy in STEM’ Fellowship
2021 Science and Technology Studies Mini-Fellowship, Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center
2021 Research & Writing Award, Center for Culture, History, and the Environment
2020 Research Award, Department of Anthropology
2020 Travel Grant, Center for Culture, History, and the Environment
2020 Planetary Health Scholarship, Global Health Institute
2019-2020 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar ‘Interrogating the Plantationocene’
Fellowship
2019 Scott Kloeck-Jenson Fellowship for Pre-Dissertation Travel Award
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore
2014 Research Analyst Award, Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Peer-Reviewed Edited Special Issues
2018 “Islamisation in Southeast Asia: Religion, politics, and beyond,” Journal of Religious and
Political Practice, 4(3): 209-213, 2018 (with Nawab Osman)
Peer-Reviewed Articles
Forthcoming “Aesthetics of Immersion: Contemporary Art and Pedagogies of Life in the Malaysian
Rubberscape,” Environmental Humanities
2020 “Malay-Muslim women machineries: PAS Dewan Muslimat and UMNO Wanita in
GE14,” The Roundtable: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs 109(2): 193-208
2019 “The Sound of Silence: Nuancing Religiopolitical Legitimacy and Conceptualizing the Appeal of ISIS in Malaysia,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, 41(1) (with Joseph Liow)
2018 “Speaking Islam/ic: Self-actualization and justice in Malaysia and India,” Journal of
Religious and Political Practice 4(3): 233-255
2018 “Understanding the Creation and Radicalisation of the Student Islamic Movement of India and the Indian Mujahideen,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 41(3)
In preparation
“White Supremacy, Scientific Racism, and Extractivism: A framework for anti-racist histories of science in STEM education” for Science & Education (with Elizabeth Hennessy, Erika Marin-Spiotta, and Evan Hepler-Smith; Accepted with revisions)
“’The Marriage of Agriculture and Health’: Colonial fantasies of a racialized metabolic drift in British Malaya,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly (Revise and Resubmit)
“Affective Indeterminacy in the Anthropocene: Sustainable forestry, angry spirits, and Orang Asli limbo in Malaysia,” Cultural Anthropologist
Book Reviews
2020 “Claiming Indigeneity in precarious landscapes: Race, economic globalization and climate change in Rooibos land,” Anthropology Book Forum 6(1)
Public Anthropology
2022 “Plantation Worlds Syllabus.” Fieldsights: Syllabus Archive, Society for Cultural Anthropology (with Sophie Sapp Moore)
2021 “The Shitty Affairs of British Colonialism in Malaya: Manicuring ‘Native’ Agriculture through Race-Specific Livestock Interbreeding,” Platypus: Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (CASTAC), 26 October
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
Panels Organized
2025 Rescaling the Malayan Emergency, Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, March 14 (Columbus, USA)
2024 Racialized Extraction in Science, Annual Meeting of the Society of the Social Studies of Science, July 16 (Amsterdam, Netherlands; with Elizabeth Hennessy)
2021 Being Human in the Plantationocene, American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, 20 November (virtual; with Tyler Hook)
2021 Plantationocene in Southeast Asia, Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, March 22 (virtual; with Sophie Chao)
2019 Countering Violent Extremism: State Narrative, Post Colonialism and Islam, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, November 22 (San Diego, USA)
2019 Malaysia in Transition? Before and After the History May 2018 General Elections, Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, March 22 (Denver, USA; with Nawab Osman)
2018 Women, Islam and Post-Colonial Realities in Asia, Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, March 22 (Washington DC, USA)
Papers Presented
2025 “Affective Indeterminacy in the Anthropocene: Sustainable forestry, angry spirits, and Orang Asli limbo in Malaysia,” Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 19-23 (New Orleans, USA)
2025 “Retooled Excisions: Scientific Innovations and Postcolonial Socio-Environmental Justice,” Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, 3-6 September (Seattle, USA)
2025 “Extraction,” Political Concepts Graduate Conference, New School for Social Research, March 28-29 (NYC, USA)
2025 “Jungle Warfare: Chemical weapons of war and the technological affordances between science, industry, and the military during the Malayan Emergency,” Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, March 14 (Columbus, USA)
2024 “Indefinite Excisions: Tracing Extraction across Post-/Colonial Plantation Worlds,” Extraction and its Ecologies Workshop organized by Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, 6-8 April (Munich, Germany)
2022 “The Racialized Metabolic Drift: Tackling nutrient deficiencies through livestock breeding in British Malaya,” the Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science/ESOCITE, 9 December (Cholula, Mexico)
2021 “Aesthetics of possibility within plantation lifeworlds: Rubber in the life and work of Shooshie Sulaiman,” American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, November 22 (virtual)
2021 “The Aesthetics of Immersion in the Rubberscape: Decolonial Possibilities with-in Malaysian plantations lifeworlds,” Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, March 22 (virtual)
2019 “Religious rehabilitation in Singapore: religion, race, and state politics,” Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, November 22 (San Diego, USA)
2019 “The three-cornered fight of masculinities in Malaysia’s GE14,” Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, March 22 (Denver, USA)
2017 “Righteousness and Honour: Bottom-up Islamization in Malaysia and India,” Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, March 19 (Toronto, Canada)
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Appointments
2021 – 2024 Project Assistant, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Just Futures Initiative “Humanities Education for Anti-racist Literacy in STEM.” UW-Madison
2019 – 2021 Project Assistant, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar “Interrogating the Plantationocene,” UW-Madison
2016 – 2018 Associate Research Fellow, Malaysia Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Fieldwork
2024 Malaysia (January – August), Indonesia (January), India (February); Sri Lanka (March);
2023 Malaysia (January – December), Singapore (February), Japan (April); Thailand (May, August), Philippines (August), Sri Lanka (August), Indonesia (September);
2022 Malaysia (May-August, December);
2019 Indonesia (May, June), Malaysia (July-August);
2018 Bangladesh (February), Pakistan (February), Malaysia (February-May);
2017 Malaysia (January-March; July-September); Indonesia (September); Turkey (October).
2016 Malaysia (September-November); India (December).
Archives
UK
The National Archives; London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; British Library; The Archives Collection at Kew Gardens, London, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024; Special Collections at Bodleian Library, Oxford, 2021, 2022, 2024;Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge, 2021.
Malaysia
National Archives of Malaysia; The Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia; International Rubber Research and Development Board, 2022-2025.
Singapore
National Library of Singapore, 2022.
United States
The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, 2025.
France
Nancy School of Forestry, Nancy, 2025.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Instructor Race and the Scientific Method (SOC, Fall 2024)
TA HEALing the Sciences (2022; 2024)
Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (Fall 2018, Spring 2019; Fall 2020; Spring 2021)
EXHIBITIONS
2025 The Harvest Floor, film screening at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, 3-6 September (Seattle, USA)
2024 “SLAUGHTERHOUSE” by Tract Mutiny (co-founder), School of Education Art Gallery, UW-Madison (solo) https://tractmutiny.com/slaughterhouse
2022 “Kancil Mengadap Beringin (The Mousedeer Comes Before the Banyan Tree)”,Shooshie Sulaiman, Singapore Biennale Natasha (collaborator)
2020 “The Prophecy,” Fabrice Monteiro, Chazen Museum of Art (curatorial collaborator)
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
2025
Search Committee, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, UW-Madison
2020 – 2022
Co-Organizer, Borghesi-Mellon Workshop Alien Earth: Introduction to Planetary Humanities, Center for the Humanities, UW-Madison
Graduate Associate Organizing Committee, Center for Culture, History and the Environment, UW-Madison
Co-organizer, CHE-DOPE Land Grant Collab
Co-organizer, CHE 2022 Graduate Student Symposium “Re-/Generation”
2019 – 2020
President of Southeast Asian Research Group (SEARG), UW-Madison
Co-organizer, 4th Annual SEARG Symposium Development and the Built Environment in Southeast Asia (cancelled due to Covid-19)
LANGUAGES
Romanian – Native; English – Full Proficiency; Malay – Full Proficiency; Hindi – Full Proficiency; Spanish – Intermediate; Portuguese – Intermediate; French – Intermediate
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Anthropological Association; Society of the Social Studies of Science; Association of Asian Studies