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Personal History

After graduating with BA Hons in Politics and Southeast Asian Studies from the University of Kent at Canterbury (UK), I moved to Australia to undertake an MA in Southeast Asian history at Monash University. This was followed by a PhD in Southeast Asian History at the Australian National University and a period as an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Pacific and Asian History at the ANU. I took up a position at Monash University in 1995.

I am an historian of Southeast Asia, specialising in the field of Malay-Indonesian cultural and political history and in Sumatran history in particular. My research employs an interdisciplinary focus and much of my published work is informed by an interest in reading literary and other texts and by anthropological approaches to understanding culture.

Current Research

I am currently engaged in completing a book length study of Minangkabau royal letters, materials which are still only available in manuscript form. While I have drawn on these sources in my previous research, the present study will collect and describe the diverse manuscripts with the aim of making them more widely accessible. Two recent conference papers and articles have focussed on ideas of place and space in local literature from west and central Sumatra and I am researching a cultural history of West Sumatra which will draw on local narrative traditions. Other recent conference papers have focussed on "Reading Bukit Seguntang" in a Sumatran perspective and on "Perceptions of Aceh" in Sumatran literary texts. A long-standing interest in the cultural history of landscape has recently resulted in my contributing a book chapter entitled "Elusive Landscape: Australian and 'The Italian Garden'" to Bill Kent et. al., Australians in Italy: Contemporary Lives and Impressions.

Major Publications

I am the author of Sejarah Raja-Raja Barus (Gramedia and Ecole Française d'Extréme-Orient, revised edition, 2003); A Kingdom of Words: Language and Power in Sumatra (Oxford University Press, 1999); Indonesian Independence Fifty Years On: 1945-1995 (Monash Asia Institute, 1996) edited with J.D Legge; A Malay Frontier: Unity and Duality in a Sumatran Kingdom (Cornell Southeast Asia Project, 1990), as well as chapters, articles and encyclopedia entries on Sumatran history and literature.

Areas of Research & Supervision

I am available to supervise honours and postgraduate dissertations in any area of Southeast Asia history. My area of particular expertise is in Indonesian and Malay history, but I have also supervised Honours, Masters and PhD theses in Burmese and Vietnamese history. In addition I have supervised a number of dissertations in the area of the Vietnam War and currently have two PhD students working in that field. I am also interested in supervising projects in broader areas of colonial history and cross-cultural interaction.

I would be happy to discuss supervision with any student interested in these topics and in co-supervising with colleagues from other parts of the University where appropriate.

Teaching

My areas of teaching include more specialised Southeast Asian units such as Nationalism and Revolution in Southeast Asia and The Island World of Southeast Asia, both of which make extensive use of local sources in translation, and broader contemporary units such as The Vietnam War and Travel and Global Encounters which are intended to be accessible to students from any discipline. I have received a Dean's Commendation for Excellence in Teaching and a 2008 Dean's Teaching Award for Excellence in innovation and teaching.

HSY2/3460 - The Vietnam War
HSY2/3710 - The island world of Southeast Asia
HSY2/3725 - Nationalism and revolution in Southeast Asia
HSY4030/HYM4/5030 - The Culture of the Vietnam War
HSY4950/HYM4/5950 - Hidden transcripts
INT2/3095 - Travel and global encounters