Catherine Allerton is a specialist in the anthropology of island Southeast Asia, and has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Flores, Indonesia and Sabah, East Malaysia. Catherine’s current research explores experiences of exclusion, belonging and potential statelessness amongst the children of refugees and migrants in Sabah, East Malaysia. Some of the pictures and stories collected from children, illustrating their perspectives on migration and life in Malaysia, can be seen at www.childrenofmigrationsabah.com|.
Catherine’s earlier research was conducted in rural Manggarai, in the west of the Indonesian island of Flores, resulting in a number of articles and a book, Potent Landscapes: Place and Mobility in Eastern Indonesia (2013). This research analyses the many scales and consequences of entanglement between people and places in a society of ‘agricultural animists’, and explores the mobility that is central to Manggarai landscapes and kinship. In addition to her work on the power of place, Catherine has also written on comparative spiritual landscapes of Southeast Asia, the lives of unmarried Manggarai women, hospitality, cosmetics, sarongs, tourism and schooling.