Our people

Professor Anne Booth

Prof Anne Booth is Professor Emerita at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has researched on the economies of Southeast Asia in both the colonial and post-colonial eras, and has written and edited a number of books on the region as well as articles in journals.

Professor Beng Huat Chua 

Prof Chua Beng Huat received his PhD from York University, Canada. Concurrently he is the Provost Chair Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, and Head of the Department of Sociology, at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also the Research Leader of Cultural Studies in Asia Research Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. He is currently Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Temenggong Artists-in-Residence, a non-profit visual arts institution in Singapore.

Dr Suraya Ismail

Dr Suraya Ismail is Director of Research at Khazanah Research Institute (KRI). She is a member of the Panel of Experts, Ministry of Housing and Local Government; and council member of both National Costs of Living Council, and National Council of Digital Economy, Government of Malaysia. Before joining the Institute, she was Program Director at Think City (a city-making initiative of Khazanah Nasional Berhad), where her role involved developing urban regeneration initiatives through a public grants program in George Town UNESCO WHS, Penang. Prior to that, Suraya was the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of the Built Environment at University Malaya as well as the Head of the Department of Quantity Surveying.

Suraya was educated at the University of Reading, the University of Malaya and the Bartlett School, UCL. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge. 

Collin Liu

Collin Liu FCA is a member of the Regional Management Council of Rajah & Tann Asia where he serves as Chief Operating Officer (Southeast Asia) and Chief Sustainability Officer (Singapore). Earlier in his career, Collin worked with Baker McKenzie, Allen & Gledhill LLP and PwC in Singapore and London, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales. Collin is chair of The Singapore LSE Trust and read economics at the LSE from 1994 to 1997. He serves on the boards of The Arts House Limited, a not-for-profit institution promoting performing and literary art in Singapore and Citystate Capital Asia Pte. Ltd., a financial holding company.

Professor Jonathan Rigg (SEAC Advisory Board Chair)

Prof Jonathan Rigg is Chair in Human Geography, University of Bristol, and Professor in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. Prior to that, he was Head of the Geography Department at Durham University in the UK. He was also based at the School of Oriental & African Studies, London University where he was a Lecturer, British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, and PhD student. 

From 2016 to 2019, he held the position of Director of the Asia Research Institute, National University Singapore. 

Professor Catherine Allerton

Professor Catherine Allerton is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, LSE, and is a specialist in the anthropology of island Southeast Asia, with research interests in children and childhoods, migration, kinship, place and landscape. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a two-placed village in Flores, Indonesia and in the capital city of Sabah, East Malaysia. Her current research explores experiences of exclusion, belonging and potential statelessness amongst the children of Indonesian and Filipino refugees and migrants in Sabah, East Malaysia.

Dr Fenella Cannell

Dr Fenella Cannell is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and is a specialist in Southeast Asian anthropology. Her research explored the ways in which people come to think about "culture" in a post-colonial society, and focused on women's lives and arranged marriage, spirit-mediumship, saint's cults and religion, and popular performances including transvestite beauty contests. She has since carried out historically-based work on the Philippines, especially on education, kinship, and gender in the American colonial period.

Dr Chris Chaplin

Dr Chris Chaplin is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow in the Religion and Global Society Research Unit at the LSE. He has spent over 14 years working on the region in both academic and other professional roles and specialises in the anthropology of maritime Southeast Asia. His research focuses on the convergence between global religious doctrines and local understandings of piety and faith, and how these influence contemporary ideas of religious belonging, solidarity, and social activism.  

Professor Kent Deng

Prof. Kent Deng is Professor in Economic History in the LSE Department of Economic History. He leads the LSE postgraduate module "Economic Development of East and Southeast Asia" and his research interests and writing include the rise of the literati in the economic life of pre-modern China and the maritime economic history of Asia.

Professor Tim Forsyth 

Prof Tim Forsyth is Professor of Environment and Development at LSE. He has six years’ professional experience within Southeast Asia as either a researcher or worker, and is fluent in Thai with skills in Bahasa Indonesia and Burmese. His research focuses on the politics of environmental policymaking, with a particular interest in understanding local environmental risk and livelihoods, and reflecting this knowledge in global environmental policies and assessments.

Dr Sin Yee Koh

Dr Sin Yee Koh is Senior Assistant Professor in Asian Migration, Mobility and Diaspora at the Institute of Asian Studies, Universiti Brunei Darussalam and also Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University Malaysia. Her work uses the lens of migration and mobility to understand the circulations of people, capital, and aspirations in and through cities. She has published on migration and colonial legacies, diaspora strategies, academic and teacher expatriate mobilities, migration and urban intermediaries, and lifestyle migration-led urban speculation. She was a Co-Investigator for the SEAC Research Project "The Urban Spectre of Global China: Mechanisms, Consequences and Alternatives for Urban Futures".

Dr Nicholas Long 

Dr Nicholas Long is Associate Professor of Anthropology at LSE. He works on the anthropology of Indonesia and the Malay World (with a particular interest in Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago), and on responses to COVID-19 in the UK and Aotearoa New Zealand. He won the 2019 Stirling Prize for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology for his article ‘Suggestions of Power: Searching for Efficacy in Indonesia's Hypnosis Boom’, and is currently conducting an ESRC-funded ethnographic study of Indonesia’s hypnosis and hypnotherapy circuit.

Professor Duncan McCargo

Prof Duncan McCargo works mainly on the comparative politics of Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, on which he has published widely. He hails from the North of England and did his graduate studies at SOAS, University of London. He joined NTU from the University of Copenhagen, where he was Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science from 2019 to 2023. Duncan previously held professorial appointments at the University of Leeds and Columbia University. At Leeds, he twice headed the School of Politics and International Studies, and co-supervised 30 PhD students to successful completion. At Columbia he co-founded the New York Southeast Asia Network.

His books include the award-winning Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell 2008), as well as Fighting for Virtue: Politics and Justice in Thailand (Cornell 2019) and Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party (co-authored, NIAS Press 2020). Duncan has also written on politics and the media in Asia more broadly, as well as a standard introductory textbook on Japan.

Professor Deirdre McKay

Professor Deirdre McKay is Professor of Sustainable Development at Keele University, and past Chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Studies UK (ASEAS UK). Her research draws on both social/cultural geography and social anthropology to explore people's place-based experiences of globalisation and development. She has done fieldwork is in areas of the global South and also with migrant communities from developing areas who have moved into the world's major cities. Much of her work has been conducted with people who originate in indigenous villages in the northern Philippines and she is also working on place-based and place-making projects with diverse communities in the UK.

Dr Catalina Ortiz

Dr Catalina Ortiz is Associate Professor at the Development Planning Unit at University College London. Catalina is committed to a negotiated co-production of urban space grounded on ethics of care and engaged scholarship. Using decolonial and critical urban theory through knowledge co-production methodologies, Catalina engages with critical urban pedagogies, planning for equality, and southern urbanisms in Latin America and Southeast Asia

Professor James Putzel 

Prof James Putzel is Professor of Development Studies in the International Development Department, LSE, where he served as head of Department 1999-2001 and Director of the Crisis States Research Centre from 2001-2011 and now directs the MSc in Development Studies. He is well-known for his research in the Philippines where he has maintained active research since 1984. His articles and books on Southeast Asia have examined agrarian reform, developmental states, democratic transitions, social capital, development aid, NGOs and civil society, nationalism, armed conflict, communist movements, the role of political Islam and the rise of rightist populist politics. Recent publications on the region include, ‘The populist right challenge to neoliberalism: social policy between a rock and a hard place’ Development and Change, February 2020, and ‘Bangsamoro Autonomy and the Political Settlement in the Philippines’. Chapter 10 in F. Lara Jr. and N. De la Rosa (eds) Conflict’s Long Game: A Decade of Violence in the Bangsamoro. Quezon City: International Alert Philippines, 2022.

Professor Danny Quah 

Prof Danny Quah is the Dean and Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Prof Quah's research interests include income inequality, economic growth, and international economic relations. 

Prof Quah is Commissioner on the Spence-Stiglitz Commission on Global Economic Transformation; Member, Executive Committee, International Economic Association; and Senior Fellow, Asian Bureau of Finance and Economics Research. He was also LSE SEAC's inaugural director in 2014-2016.

Dr Kirsten Schulze

Dr Kirsten Schulze is Associate Professor in International History at LSE. She works on communal and separatist conflicts as well as Islamism in Indonesia and the Middle East. Her publications on Indonesia include: The ‘Ethnic’ in Indonesia’s Communal Conflicts: violence in Poso, Ambon and West Kalimantan (2017), The Islamic State and Southeast Asia (2016), and Transforming the Aceh Conflict: From Military Solutions to Political Agreement (2013). 

From 2014-2016 Dr Schulze was the Deputy Director of LSE SEAC, from 2012-14 she was the head of the LSE IDEAS Southeast Asia Program, and from 2004-2012 she ran the Indonesia seminar series at Chatham House.

Professor Hyun Bang Shin

Prof Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Head of the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE. Prof Shin’s research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of urbanisation with particular attention to cities in Asian countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea and China. Prof Shin has published widely in major international journals and contributed to numerous books on the above themes. His most recent books include  Exporting Urban Korea? Reconsidering the Korean Urban Development Experience (2021, Routledge); Covid-19 in Southeast Asia: An Insight into a Post-Pandemic World (LSE Press, 2022); The Political Economy of Mega Projects in Asia: Globalization and Urban Transformation (forthcoming, Routledge). He is Editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and a trustee of the Urban Studies Foundation. He is also a co-organiser of the Urban Salon, an interdisciplinary London forum for architecture, cities and international urbanism, and edits an LSE blog Field Research Methods Lab. 

Prof. Shin was SEAC Centre Director from August 2018- July 2023.

Dr Thomas Smith 

Dr Thomas Smith is Assistant Professor in Environmental Geography at LSE. He teaches a number of environmental courses, focusing on innovative technology-enhanced experiential learning and field-based education in geography. He joined the Department in 2018, having previously been a Lecturer at King’s College London. He holds a PhD in Physical Geography from King’s College London and has held Visiting Fellow posts at the National University of Singapore, Monash University Malaysia, University of Wollongong (Australia) and Universiti Brunei Darussalam.

Dr Hans Steinmüller

Dr Hans Steinmüller is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, LSE and a specialist in the anthropology of China. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in Hubei Province (central China) and in the Wa hills of the China-Myanmar border. Publications include the monograph Communities of Complicity (Berghahn 2013), and more recently special issues on Governing Opacity (Ethnos 2023) and Crises of Care in China Today (China Quarterly 2023). He is editor of Social Analysis and convenor of the MSc programme 'China in Comparative Perspective'.

Dr Qingfei Yin

Dr Qingfei Yin is Assistant Professor of International History (China and the World) at LSE. As a historian of contemporary China and inter-Asian relations, her research focuses on China’s relations with its Asian neighbours, Asian borderlands, and the Cold War in Asia. She is particularly interested in how the global Cold War interacted with state-building in marginal societies. She is currently completing her book manuscript State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border (under contract with Cambridge University Press). Subsequent projects are on how capitalist Southeast Asian countries shaped China during the latter’s early reform era in the 1980s and the historical memory of the Sino-Vietnamese Cold War partnership in the two countries. Dr Yin is an alumna of the LSE-Peking University Double MSc in International Affairs Programme. She studied International Politics and History at Peking University for her undergraduate degrees and completed her PhD in History at George Washington University. Before returning to LSE, she was Assistant Professor of History at Virginia Military Institute. She also serves as the Book Review Editor of Journal of Military History and on the Editorial Board of Cold War History.

Dr Yimin Zhao 

Dr Yimin Zhao is Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and Management at the School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China and was a Co-Investigator for the SEAC Research Project "The Urban Spectre of Global China: Mechanisms, Consequences and Alternatives for Urban Futures". He is an editor of the journal City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, and a corresponding editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Dr Do Young Oh

Dr Do Young Oh is a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University. He was previously a Research Officer, based jointly at the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he finished his PhD in Regional and Urban Planning. His research interests focus on comparative urbanism and postcolonialism in East Asia. His doctoral thesis investigated the evolving university-city relationship through a comparative analysis of East Asian urbanisation processes. His thesis was short-listed for the biennial ICAS Book Prize in 2019 (Dissertation in the Social Sciences). Oh has published in major international journals including the Journal of Urban History and Cities.

Dr Benjamin Lawrence (Visiting Fellow) is a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Centre for Asian Legal Studies (CALS). Dr Lawrence was at SEAC as Visiting Fellow from 1 May to 31 July 2023. Dr Lawrence's research at SEAC focused on the Micropolitics of Constitutionalism in Cambodia.

Learn more about Dr Lawrence in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz (Visiting Fellow) is Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Supervisor in World History, and the Executive Director of the Toynbee Prize Foundation. Dr CuUnjieng Aboitiz joined SEAC from 1 February to 31 July 2023. Dr CuUnjieng Aboitiz's research at SEAC focused on Co-constitution of Filipino Elite Class and Relationships with Nature, 1870-1986.

Learn more about Dr CuUnjieng Aboitiz in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Ofita Purwani (Visiting Senior Fellow) is Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia. Dr Purwani was at the Centre as Visiting Senior Fellow from 1 April to 30 June 2023. Dr Purwani's research at SEAC focuses on urban development in Yogyakarta after decentralisation.

Learn more about Dr Purwani in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Kanokrat Lertchoosakul (Visiting Fellow) is assistant professor at the department of government, faculty of political science, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. Dr Lertchoosakul joins SEAC from 1 February to 30 April 2023. Dr Lertchoosakul's research at SEAC focuses on The Cutting Edge Youth Movement in Thailand and Unfinished Democracy.

Learn more about Dr Lertchoosakul in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Andy Scott Chang (Visiting Senior Fellow) is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Singapore Management University. Dr Chang joined SEAC from 30 January to 24 April 2023. Dr Chang's research at SEAC focused on The Making of “Foreign-Exchange Heroes”: Gender, Occupation, and the Social Organization of Labour Migration in Indonesia.

Learn more about Dr Chang in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Helena Varkkey (Visiting Fellow) is Associate Professor of Environmental Politics at the Department of International and Strategic Studies, Universiti Malaya. Dr Varkkey joined SEAC from 30 January to 12 March 2023. Dr Varkkey's research at SEAC focused on Seasonality in the Anthropocene: Understanding Transboundary Haze in Southeast Asia.

Learn more about Dr Varkkey in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Professor Tamaki Endo (Visiting Professor) is Professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Saitama University. Prof Endo was at the Centre as Visiting Senior Fellow from 1st October 2022 to 31st January 2023. Prof Endo’s research at SEAC focused on urban inequality in Thailand. 

Learn more about Prof Endo in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Prof Julio Tehankee (Visiting Senior Fellow) is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at De La Salle University. Prof Teehankee joins SEAC as Visiting Senior Fellow from 19 September - 19 December 2022. During his fellowship Prof Teehankee's research will focus on Authoritarian Nostalgiaand the Marcos Restoration in the Philippines.

Learn more about Prof Teehankee in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Sulfikar Amir (Visiting Senior Fellow) is an Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) in the Sociology Programme, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University. He joined the Centre as Visiting Senior Fellow from 19 September - 19 December 2022. During his fellowship Dr Amir's research focused on Scrutinizing Nusantara: The Fallacies of Indonesia’s New Capital, and How Political Leadership Shapes Covid-19 Mitigation in Southeast Asia.

Dr Gerard McCarthy (Visiting Fellow) is Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Dr McCarthy joined SEAC as Visiting Fellow from 5 September - 2 September 2022. During his fellowship his research focused on Politics of gig-economy in Southeast Asia; and hybrid political order in Asia.

 Learn more about Dr McCarthy in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Lin Hongxuan (Visiting Fellow) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He joined the Centre as Visiting Fellow from 31st January 2022 for a year. During his fellowship his research focused on the historical production and circulation of progressive Islamic ideas across the Malay Archipelago.

Read more on Dr Lin in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Joseph Scalice (Visiting Fellow) was a Postdoctoral researcher at Nanyang Technological University. Dr Scalice was at the Centre as Visiting Fellow from 15 November 2021 - 30 April 2022. Dr Scalice's research at SEAC focused on how the Sino-Soviet split impacted critical political developments in the Southeast Asian region.

Read more on Dr Scalice in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Junjia Ye (Visiting Fellow) is Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Nanyang Technological University. Dr Ye was at the Centre as Visiting Fellow from 4 October 2021 - 3 January 2022. Dr Ye's research at SEAC focused on surveillance and borderings in migrant enclaves in Singapore.

Learn more about Dr Ye and her work in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Jayde Roberts (Visiting Fellow) is Senior Lecturer in the School of Built Environment at UNSW Sydney. Dr Roberts was at the Centre as Visiting Fellow from 27 September - 31 December 2021. Dr Roberts's research at SEAC focused on public space in the two largest cities of Myanmar: Yangon and Mandalay.

Read more on Dr Roberts in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Emma Colven (Visiting Fellow) is Assistant Professor of Global Environment at the University of Oklahoma. Dr Colven was at the Centre as Visiting Fellow from 27 September - 17 December 2021. Dr Colven's research at SEAC focused on flooding, water crises and the real estate industry in Jakarta.

Learn more about Dr Colven and her work in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Shanthi Thambiah (Visiting Senior Fellow) is Associate Professor in the Gender Studies Program, at the University of Malaya. Dr Thambiah was at the Centre as Visiting Senior Fellow from 15 July - 15 October 2021. Dr Thambiah's research at SEAC focused on the emotional interconnectedness and governance of Indonesian and Malaysian Migrant Domestic Workers.

Learn more about Dr Thambiah and her work in SEAC's Spotlight On... Series

Dr Joanne Lim (Visiting Senior Fellow) is Associate Professor in Communications, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham in Malaysia. She is also Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. Dr Lim was at the Centre as Visiting Senior Fellow from 4th May 2021 to 2nd July 2021. Dr Lim’s research at SEAC focused on digital interventions in Southeast Asia cities.

Dr Merlyna Lim (Visiting Senior Fellow) is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society at Carleton University Canada. An ALiGN Media Lab founder/director, Dr Lim’s research interests revolve around the mutual shaping of technology and society, and political culture of technology, especially digital media and information technology, in relation to issues of justice, democracy and civic/participatory engagement. Dr Lim is an interdisciplinary scholar who has published extensively in various disciplines, including communication and media studies, religious studies, journalism, urban studies/sociology, geography, anthropology, Asian studies, Middle East studies, information and library science, computer science and information systems.

Do Young Oh (Visiting Fellow) is a Researcher at LSE Cities. He recently completed his PhD in Regional and Urban Planning at the Department of Geography and Environment at the LSE with his thesis focusing on a comparative analysis of East Asian urbanisation processes. His research at LSE research involves an investigation into the university-city relationship in Singapore and Vietnam in a (post-)colonial context. 

Daniel Peterson (Visiting Research Student) is currently completing his PhD at the Institute for Religion, Politics and Society at Australian Catholic University. Daniel’s thesis investigates whether or not Indonesia's broader human rights legal framework can withstand the challenges presented by the rise of political Islam in the archipelago. Daniel also works as a research assistant at the Institute, where he is a principal contributor to both Euro-Islam and SHARIAsource

Lukas Schlogl (Visiting Fellow) is a Research Associate with the ESRC Global Poverty & Inequality Dynamics Research Network at the Department of International Development, King’s College London. His current work focuses on structural change, digital transformation, and political behavior in Indonesia. At SEAC, Lukas reviewed the extant literature about potential economic impacts of labour-displacing technological change on Southeast Asian economies.

Joel Selway (Visiting Senior Fellow) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. His research interests focus on ethnically-divided societies, and especially on how to design democratic institutions to prevent conflict. During his time with SEAC, Dr Selway examined the question of whether Thailand’s nation-building project will endure beyond the death of its beloved monarch, the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej. 

Tim Andrews (Visiting Senior Fellow) is an Associate Professor at Webster University (Thailand) and a previous academic at Thammasat University based in Bangkok. His research at LSE SEAC focused on an investigation into the working lives of base-of-organizational-pyramid employees in emerging Southeast Asia.

Chris Chaplin (Visiting Fellow) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). His research at LSE SEAC examined the relationships between conservative Islamic activism and modern understandings of citizenship and class in post-Suharto Indonesia.

Trude Jacobsen (Visiting Senior Fellow) is an Associate Professor of Southeast Asian history at Northern Illinois University, where she has served as Assistant Director in the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Her research at LSE SEAC was on cultural history of madness, psychiatry, and mental health in mainland Southeast Asia from c. 1800 to 1950.

Stephen James (Visiting Research Student) has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and an MA in Southeast Asian Studies. His research at LSE SEAC involved carrying out a multi-sited, longitudinal study of Vietnamese migration, focusing on forced migration through the Vietnam-Hong Kong-London trajectory.

Joern Dosch (Visiting Professor) is Professor of International Politics and Development Cooperation at the University of Rostock, Germany. His research at LSE SEAC involved a comparative study of foreign policies of the Southeast Asian States as well as Europe-Asia relations.

Ken Teoh (Visiting Research Student) worked as Research Assistant both at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Economics and at the Wharton School’s Management Department. His key interests are in econometrics, statistical modelling, and consumer and macroeconomic data analysis.

Lucy Zhu (Visiting Research Student) was working as a research assistant for Professor Danny Quah through the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute of Global Affairs, of which she was a 2015 Fellow. She studied the dynamic Eastern-Western economic relationship from an international relations perspective.