The Australian National University

Faculty Member, Anthropology, School of Culture, History and Language

ANU College of Asia and the Pacific

About

My main field research to date has been in the province of Maluku Indonesia, though recently I have also been working in Southeast Sulawesi.

After teaching for several years in religion, ritual & cosmology and the anthropology of conflict & violence,  I'm currently involved in a research project exploring Muslim identity and diverse expressions of Islam in eastern Indonesia, funded by the Australian Research Council. I am a senior research associate with that project. 

As part of this project I completed several months fieldwork in 2009 on the north coast of Ambon Island (Jazirah Leihitu) in central Maluku, a significant location in the historical dissemination of Islam in Indonesia.  In 2010 I conducted further fieldwork in SE Sulawesi (Bau-Bau & the Wakatobi Islands). These form the key source of mobile Muslim populations which have settled throughout eastern Indonesia, who profess a social/cultural identity (Butonese) closely linked to the historical existence of a local Muslim Sultanate.

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