Research Publications

"Qingzhen from the Perspective of the Other: Consumption and Muslim Boundary-Making in Republican China, 1920 to 1949," Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies, 3:2, November 2018.

Non-academic brief: If we move away from state-society structures of power, how do religious regulations on food impact socialization into groups? A view from Republican China - well before the advent of coercive re-education camps recently in Xinjiang - and potentially useful for thinking about what other paths China could have taken with regards to its Muslim minorities.

"Traditional Malay Medicine in Singapore: A Gramscian Perspective," in Indonesia and the Malay World, 45:131 (with Humairah Zainal), March 2017

Non-academic brief: Is the business of traditional Malay medicine really traditional and why does the Singapore state care? (Hint: Hegemony)

“Detentions in Mass Violence: Policy and Practice in Indonesia 1965 – 1968,” in Critical Asian Studies, 44:3 (with Douglas Kammen), September 2012

Non-academic brief: What can regional variations in process of detaining political prisoners tell us about the mass killings of suspected communists and leftist affiliates in Indonesia from 1965 to 1968?

“A Multicultural Space in a Global Cityscape: The Neighbourhood Coffee Shop,” in Global Studies Journal, 3:3, October 2010

Non-academic brief: How do we situate the small, local business in a global economy? From the perspective of someone who missed a boat and found a coffee shop.

“An Empire State of the Mind: Malayu Imaginings of Rum and the Early Modern Ottoman Empire,” in Between the Mountain and the Sea: Positioning Indonesia, edited by Frank Dhont, Tracy Wright Webster and Rommel A. Curaming, 1-26. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Madah University Press, 2013

Non-academic brief: Early modern connections between maritime Southeast Asia and the Ottoman empire through the history and political imagination of one word - Rum.

In 2015, I worked as part of the research and writing team of the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS)'s project documenting the history of fatwa-making in the state. This book is the first of a themed series that puts together both the scriptural basis and social history in the issuance of fatwas (religious edicts). Open access here.

"What Grows in A Graveyard," Environmental History Now, Aug 2020 (forthcoming)

"Senandung Cov-Eid 2020," Sekata, (Journal of the Singapore Malay Language Council), Aug 2020. (In Malay, forthcoming)

"Cov-Eid Images as Event and Archive," CoronAsur: Religion and Covid-19, June 2020.

"The Toba Super Catastrophe and the Environmental History of a Future," Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Nalanda -Sriwijaya Center Highlights, Vol. 10, September 2018.

"Trailing the Anthropocene in the Footsteps of Claire Holt," Cornell Southeast Asia Program Bulletin, Fall 2018.

"Mapping Contradictory Democratic Experiences in Asia," Yale Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 10, Dec 2014.

Gatty Lecture Rewind Podcast Episode 7, October 2018 on the Toba Super Catastrophe.

Listen to it on Soundcloud, iTunes or Spotify

Lecture Theatre - Humanities x Public Life Episode 1, February 2019 on Southeast Asian centres, switching to academia mid-career and book in progress.

Listen to it on Soundcloud, iTunes or Spotify

Host on New Books Network - Check out interviews with

Timothy Barnard on "Imperial Creatures"

Sher Banu Khan on "Sovereign Women in a Muslim Kingdom"

Jerome Whitington on "Anthropogenic Rivers"

Carlo Caduff on "The Pandemic Perhaps"

Kevin W. Fogg on "Indonesia's Islamic Revolution"