Presenting Faculty
Muhamad ALI is the director of Middle East and Islamic Studies, and an associate professor in Islamic Studies, at the Department for the Study of Religion, and Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual, and Performance (SEATRIP), University of California, Riverside. Currently an associate editor of Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, Ali received a B.A. in Islamic studies from the State Islamic University, Indonesia; a M.Sc. in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His books include Multicultural-Pluralist Theology and Islam and Colonialism: Becoming Modern in Indonesia and Malaya; articles on interfaith marriage in Indonesia, Indonesian Muslims perceptions of Jews and Judaism, and Indonesian ideas on inter-religious relations; book chapters on modern Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia and religious pluralism and freedom in Islam; and entries on Islam’s global interactions and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Indonesia. He teaches courses, including Comparative Scripture, Religious Myths and Rituals, Asian Religions, Reading the Qur’an, Topics in Modern Islam, Transnational Religions, Public Discourses in Modern Islam, Religions in Southeast Asia, and Islam in Southeast Asia.
Barbara ANDAYA is Professor in the Asian Studies Program at the University of Hawai‘i and former Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. In 2005-06 she was President of the American Association of Asian Studies. Educated at the University of Sydney (BA, Dip.Ed.), she received an East-West Center grant in 1966 and obtained her MA in history at the University of Hawai‘i. She subsequently went on to study for her Ph.D. at Cornell University with a specialization in Southeast Asian history. Her career has involved teaching and researching in Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and since 1994, Hawai‘i. She maintains an active teaching and research interest across all Southeast Asia, but her specific area of expertise is the western Malay-Indonesia archipelago. In 2000, she received a John Simon Guggenheim Award, which resulted in The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Southeast Asian History, 1500-1800. She is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Gender and Sexuality in Southeast Asia and is also General Editor of the new Cambridge History of Southeast Asia.
Veronica ALPORHA is a doctorate student at the Department of History of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa where she also serves as a graduate assistant. Before coming to Hawai‘i, she was assistant professor of History at the University of the Philippines Los Baños where she taught courses on Philippine History and Gender and Sexuality. She acquired her Bachelor of Arts in the Social Sciences (History and Political Science) at the University of the Philippines Baguio and her Master of Arts in History at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Her interests include intellectual history, social history, and historiography. Her current research focuses on the conceptual history of work in relation to empire and colonialism in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. She authored articles and think pieces on the history of social movements and democracy in the Philippines. She is also co-author to a college textbook, titled Readings in Philippine History (2017, 2021). She co-hosts and co-produces a podcast called PODKAS: Conversations on Philippine History, Politics, and Society.
George DUTTON is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies and Vietnamese History in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA. In addition to Vietnamese history courses, he also teaches about modern Southeast Asian literature, Southeast Asian religion, and upland ethnic communities. He is a specialist in early modern Vietnamese social and intellectual history. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he is the author of A Vietnamese Moses: Philiphe Binh and the Geographies of Early Modern Catholicism (UC Press, 2017) winner of the inaugural Fondação Oriente Book Prize, and The Tay Son Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth Century Vietnam (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006). He is also editor of Voices of Southeast Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2014) and co-editor of Sources of Vietnamese Tradition (Columbia University Press, 2012), named a Choice outstanding title.
Micah R. FISHER, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow at the East-West Center. He conducts research on the human dimensions of environmental change on landscapes, watersheds, and urbanization in the Asia-Pacific. He is an affiliate graduate faculty in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is affiliate senior lecturer at the Department of Forestry at Hasanuddin University in Indonesia. He currently serves as co-Editor in Chief for the academic peer reviewed journal Forest and Society, which focuses geographically on Southeast Asia.
Paul A. LAVY is Associate Professor of South/Southeast Asian Art History at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He received his B.A. in cultural anthropology from Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, VA, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in South and Southeast Asian art history from the University of California, Los Angeles. His teaching, research, and publications focus on the Hindu-Buddhist art and architecture traditions of Cambodia, Thailand, and the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam, as well as their relationships with the art and architecture of South Asia. He is the co-editor of Across the South of Asia: A Volume in Honor of Professor Robert L. Brown and he is currently writing a book entitled The Crowned Gods of Early Southeast Asia.
Jonathan PADWE is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where he teaches courses in environmental anthropology and the anthropology of Southeast Asia. His research looks at the relationship between landscape, ecology and memory in the highlands of Cambodia. His recent book Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories, based on years of field research in Cambodia's northeast borderland, looks at the country's history from the perspective of the landscape and of the Jarai hill farmers who live in it. Dr. Padwe holds a Ph.D. from Yale University; his work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. His current research looks at the role of mosquitos in the formation of culture and geography of mainland Southeast Asia.
Krisna SURYANATA is Professor of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa since 1997. As a political ecologist, she focuses in the critical analysis of ecological sustainability. She was born and raised in Indonesia, where she acquired a technical training and professional experience in soil sciences and remote sensing. Trained as a human geographer at the University of California at Berkeley, she utilizes multi-scale analysis to examine environmental and landscape changes in the context of the global political economy. Her work investigates the impacts of commodity production on property institutions and livelihood practices in rural Indonesia, the processes of agrarian change in contemporary Hawai‘i, and the intersection of technological change and socio-economic transformation in agricultural communities.
Environmental issues tend to elicit passionate discussions. In her teaching, she aims to situate these discussions in the broader context, and to steer students to informed productive engagements. Her students critically assess how historical and environmental processes link people and influence human relationships, for a holistic approach to understanding natural resource management.
Eric TAGLIACOZZO is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University, director of the Einaudi Center's Comparative Muslim Societies Program, and co-director of the Migrations initiative. He is also the head of Cornell's Modern Indonesia Project (CMIP) and editor of the journal INDONESIA. His research centers on the history of people, ideas, and material in motion in and around Southeast Asia. His first book, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier (Yale, 2005), analyzed the history of smuggling in the region, and his second book The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Oxford, 2013) attempted to write a history of the region's Hajj from earliest times to the present. He is editor or co-editor of many other books, on the global Hajj (Cambridge, 2016); on trans-nationalism in Asia seen through periods (Harvard, 2015a), through place (Harvard, 2015b), and through people (Harvard, 2019); on Burmese lives under a coercive regime (Oxford, 2014); on the field of Indonesian Studies (Cornell, 2014), and Indonesian sources more generally (Duke, 2009); on Chinese trade to Southeast Asia (Duke, 2009), and Southeast Asian contacts west to the Middle East (Stanford, 2009); and on the relationship between History and Anthropology (Stanford, 2009). He recently finished a monograph about the linked maritime histories of Asia (Princeton, 2022).
Presenting Faculty
Muhamad ALI is the director of Middle East and Islamic Studies, and an associate professor in Islamic Studies, at the Department for the Study of Religion, and Southeast Asia: Text, Ritual, and Performance (SEATRIP), University of California, Riverside. Currently an associate editor of Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, Ali received a B.A. in Islamic studies from the State Islamic University, Indonesia; a M.Sc. in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His books include Multicultural-Pluralist Theology and Islam and Colonialism: Becoming Modern in Indonesia and Malaya; articles on interfaith marriage in Indonesia, Indonesian Muslims perceptions of Jews and Judaism, and Indonesian ideas on inter-religious relations; book chapters on modern Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia and religious pluralism and freedom in Islam; and entries on Islam’s global interactions and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Indonesia. He teaches courses, including Comparative Scripture, Religious Myths and Rituals, Asian Religions, Reading the Qur’an, Topics in Modern Islam, Transnational Religions, Public Discourses in Modern Islam, Religions in Southeast Asia, and Islam in Southeast Asia.
Barbara ANDAYA is Professor in the Asian Studies Program at the University of Hawai‘i and former Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. In 2005-06 she was President of the American Association of Asian Studies. Educated at the University of Sydney (BA, Dip.Ed.), she received an East-West Center grant in 1966 and obtained her MA in history at the University of Hawai‘i. She subsequently went on to study for her Ph.D. at Cornell University with a specialization in Southeast Asian history. Her career has involved teaching and researching in Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and since 1994, Hawai‘i. She maintains an active teaching and research interest across all Southeast Asia, but her specific area of expertise is the western Malay-Indonesia archipelago. In 2000, she received a John Simon Guggenheim Award, which resulted in The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Southeast Asian History, 1500-1800. She is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Gender and Sexuality in Southeast Asia and is also General Editor of the new Cambridge History of Southeast Asia.
Veronica ALPORHA is a doctorate student at the Department of History of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa where she also serves as a graduate assistant. Before coming to Hawai‘i, she was assistant professor of History at the University of the Philippines Los Baños where she taught courses on Philippine History and Gender and Sexuality. She acquired her Bachelor of Arts in the Social Sciences (History and Political Science) at the University of the Philippines Baguio and her Master of Arts in History at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Her interests include intellectual history, social history, and historiography. Her current research focuses on the conceptual history of work in relation to empire and colonialism in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. She authored articles and think pieces on the history of social movements and democracy in the Philippines. She is also co-author to a college textbook, titled Readings in Philippine History (2017, 2021). She co-hosts and co-produces a podcast called PODKAS: Conversations on Philippine History, Politics, and Society.
George DUTTON is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies and Vietnamese History in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA. In addition to Vietnamese history courses, he also teaches about modern Southeast Asian literature, Southeast Asian religion, and upland ethnic communities. He is a specialist in early modern Vietnamese social and intellectual history. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, he is the author of A Vietnamese Moses: Philiphe Binh and the Geographies of Early Modern Catholicism (UC Press, 2017) winner of the inaugural Fondação Oriente Book Prize, and The Tay Son Uprising: Society and Rebellion in Eighteenth Century Vietnam (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2006). He is also editor of Voices of Southeast Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2014) and co-editor of Sources of Vietnamese Tradition (Columbia University Press, 2012), named a Choice outstanding title.
Micah R. FISHER, Ph.D. is a Research Fellow at the East-West Center. He conducts research on the human dimensions of environmental change on landscapes, watersheds, and urbanization in the Asia-Pacific. He is an affiliate graduate faculty in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is affiliate senior lecturer at the Department of Forestry at Hasanuddin University in Indonesia. He currently serves as co-Editor in Chief for the academic peer reviewed journal Forest and Society, which focuses geographically on Southeast Asia.
Paul A. LAVY is Associate Professor of South/Southeast Asian Art History at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He received his B.A. in cultural anthropology from Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, VA, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in South and Southeast Asian art history from the University of California, Los Angeles. His teaching, research, and publications focus on the Hindu-Buddhist art and architecture traditions of Cambodia, Thailand, and the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam, as well as their relationships with the art and architecture of South Asia. He is the co-editor of Across the South of Asia: A Volume in Honor of Professor Robert L. Brown and he is currently writing a book entitled The Crowned Gods of Early Southeast Asia.
Jonathan PADWE is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where he teaches courses in environmental anthropology and the anthropology of Southeast Asia. His research looks at the relationship between landscape, ecology and memory in the highlands of Cambodia. His recent book Disturbed Forests, Fragmented Memories, based on years of field research in Cambodia's northeast borderland, looks at the country's history from the perspective of the landscape and of the Jarai hill farmers who live in it. Dr. Padwe holds a Ph.D. from Yale University; his work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. His current research looks at the role of mosquitos in the formation of culture and geography of mainland Southeast Asia.
Krisna SURYANATA is Professor of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa since 1997. As a political ecologist, she focuses in the critical analysis of ecological sustainability. She was born and raised in Indonesia, where she acquired a technical training and professional experience in soil sciences and remote sensing. Trained as a human geographer at the University of California at Berkeley, she utilizes multi-scale analysis to examine environmental and landscape changes in the context of the global political economy. Her work investigates the impacts of commodity production on property institutions and livelihood practices in rural Indonesia, the processes of agrarian change in contemporary Hawai‘i, and the intersection of technological change and socio-economic transformation in agricultural communities.
Environmental issues tend to elicit passionate discussions. In her teaching, she aims to situate these discussions in the broader context, and to steer students to informed productive engagements. Her students critically assess how historical and environmental processes link people and influence human relationships, for a holistic approach to understanding natural resource management.
Eric TAGLIACOZZO is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University, director of the Einaudi Center's Comparative Muslim Societies Program, and co-director of the Migrations initiative. He is also the head of Cornell's Modern Indonesia Project (CMIP) and editor of the journal INDONESIA. His research centers on the history of people, ideas, and material in motion in and around Southeast Asia. His first book, Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier (Yale, 2005), analyzed the history of smuggling in the region, and his second book The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca (Oxford, 2013) attempted to write a history of the region's Hajj from earliest times to the present. He is editor or co-editor of many other books, on the global Hajj (Cambridge, 2016); on trans-nationalism in Asia seen through periods (Harvard, 2015a), through place (Harvard, 2015b), and through people (Harvard, 2019); on Burmese lives under a coercive regime (Oxford, 2014); on the field of Indonesian Studies (Cornell, 2014), and Indonesian sources more generally (Duke, 2009); on Chinese trade to Southeast Asia (Duke, 2009), and Southeast Asian contacts west to the Middle East (Stanford, 2009); and on the relationship between History and Anthropology (Stanford, 2009). He recently finished a monograph about the linked maritime histories of Asia (Princeton, 2022).