Harvard Scholars with Southeast Asia Expertise

Please contact jorge_espada@harvard.edu with additions or corrections.

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Robin Albrecht
MArch Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Design
The material basis of contemporary housing to understand the social and ecological impacts of building, with a focus on Indonesia

David Atherton
Associate Professor, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Rifat Atun
Professor of Global Health Systems, Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Health and health systems in Southeast Asia

Vincenzo Bollettino
Director of Program on Resilient Communities / National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Disaster resilience in Southeast Asia

Sugata Bose
Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History & Affairs, Department of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Professor Bose explores Southeast Asia's connections across the Indian Ocean inter-regional arena in his book A Hundred Horizons and Southeast Asian imaginings of Asian universalism in Asia after Europe. He teaches a lecture survey on "Modern Southeast Asia" in the spring, focusing on the theme of comparative imperialism and anti-colonial nationalism in the region. 

Sudarshana Chanda
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Race, law, intimacy, colonialism and nationalism, as well as social and cultural histories in Southeast Asia - especially Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia

Michael Chang
MArch Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Bamboo propagation, harvesting techniques, and its applications in architecture across Southeast Asia

Yi Ning Chang
Ph.D. Student, Department of Government, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Twentieth-century and postcolonial political thought specializing in mid-twentieth-century Southeast Asia; race and ethnicity; international law and politics in the global cold war; and theories of capitalism and development

Yufan Chen
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Phrae Chittiphalangsri
Associate Professor of Translation Studies; Chair, MA Program in Translation, Chalermprakiat Center of Translation and Interpretation, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Anglophone Thai fictions

Desmond Choi
MDes Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Dang Thi Viet Phuong
Visiting Scholar 2024-2025, Harvard-Yenching Institute
Research Fellow, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences
Civil society, social welfare, and development studies; Vietnam

Mikayla My Do
Ph.D. Student, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Developmental processes of identity formation, purpose development, self-efficacy, and well-being among Vietnamese adolescents using quantitative and qualitative research methodologies through social and cultural comparative lens

Melissa Dell
Andrew E. Furer Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

David Duong
Director of the Program in Global Primary Care and Social Change, Harvard Medical School

Gangsim Eom
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Korean migration to Indonesia from the Pacific War till the present time

Mattias Fibiger
Poronui Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Intersection of political economy and international relations in Southeast Asia

Jeremy S. Friedman
Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Tyler Giannini
Clinical Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Byron Good
Professor of Medical Anthropology, Dept of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Department of Anthropology, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Culture, mental illness, and mental health care in Indonesia; trauma, historical memory, and haunting/hauntology in Indonesia

Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good
Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine Emerita, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
The culture and power of biomedicine and psychiatry globally, with a current focus on Indonesia and the United States

Stephen Gray
Associate Professor of Urban Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Charles Hallisey
Yehan Numata Senior Lecturer in Buddhist Literatures, Harvard Divinity School
Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Pali language and literature, Buddhist ethics, and literature in Buddhist culture

Rema N. Hanna
Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies, Harvard Kennedy School

Jia He
Ph.D. Student Fellow 2024-2025, Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, Harvard Kennedy School
International Relations, ranging from International Political Economy to Alliance Politics, and Southeast Asia Studies

Michael Herzfeld
Ernest E. Monrad Research Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus
Social theory, history of Anthropology, social poetics, politics of history; Europe (especially Greece & Italy), and Thailand

Salmaan Keshavjee
Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine in the Field of Medical Anthropology, Harvard Medical School
Global health delivery with projects in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia

Damina Khaira
Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer on Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Narrative and Storytelling; Creative Ethnography; Gender, Aging and Cultural Transmission; Nostalgia and Collective Memory; Archives and Digitization of Traditional Folklore, Engaged Scholarship, South & Southeast Asia

Jinah Kim
George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art and Professor of South Asian Studies, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Buddhist materials across Southeast Asia

Niall Kirkwood
Charles Eliot Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Oliver Lazarus
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of the History of Sciences, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
U.S. agricultural colonization of the Philippines

Hoa Le
Senior Preceptor in Vietnamese, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Fiona Lee
Visiting Scholar 2024-2025, Harvard-Yenching Institute
Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia
Malaysian and Southeast Asian literatures in English and in translation; the politics of race and language; histories of decolonization and the global Cold War

Annette Damayanti Lienau
Assistant Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Pita Limjaroenrat
Senior Research Fellow Fall 2024, Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, Harvard Kennedy School
Grassroots issues, with a particular emphasis on advocating for welfare improvements, agricultural reform, and human rights; Thailand

Joel Littler
Postdoctoral Fellow 2024-2025, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies

Fredrik Logevall
Laurence D. Belfer Professor of History and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School
Professor of History, Department of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The struggle for Vietnam, 1945-1975

Daniel Lowery
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Government, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Military coups and democratic backsliding in Thailand

Luong Thi Hong
Visiting Scholar 2024-2025, Harvard-Yenching Institute
Senior Researcher, Institute of History, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences
Contemporary history of Vietnam (after 1945) with specific issues of the Vietnam War and the connection between Vietnam and other socialist countries during the Cold War

Anthony Macie
Post-Masters Research Fellow 2024-2025, Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, Harvard Kennedy School
Research Focus: Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and emerging financial payment systems, with research interests also including Southeast Asia economic development

Kendra McLaughlin
Ph.D. Student, Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Malcolm McPherson
Senior Research Associate with the Vietnam Program, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School
Environmental management in Indonesia and the Greater Mekong Basin

Lara Norgaard
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Patterns of trans-regional affiliation in twentieth- and twenty-first century Indonesian and Latin American cultural production, with an emphasis on Cold War regime change and post-dictatorship memory

Hai Nguyen
Director, Unseen Legacies of the Vietnam War Project
Global Vietnam Wars Studies Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

Lady Aileen Orsal
Preceptor in Filipino Languages (Tagalog), Department of South Asian Studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Camellia Linh Pham
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Translation studies, modern and contemporary Vietnamese literature and journalism, transnational literature and the literary history of French Indochina (Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Laos, Cambodia), Vietnamese and East Asian (Chinese and Japanese) cultural exchange and language politics, Sinophone Southeast Asian literatures, comparative colonialisms and modernisms in Southeast Asia

Phuong Pham
Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard Chan School of Public Health

Thanat Preeyanont
HYI-NUS Joint Doctoral Scholar Program 2024-2025
PhD Student, National University of Singapore
Modern history of Thailand; kitchen technology transfer in Cold War Thailand

Michael J. Puett
Director, Harvard University Asia Center
Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology
Temple and trade networks throughout Southeast Asia and the roles these networks have played in global history

Malavika Reddy
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
The law and its limits, kingship and sovereignty, liberalism, and the anthropology of borders through ethnographic research in Thailand

Meg Rithmire
F. Warren McFarlan Associate Professor of Business of Administration, Harvard Business School
Comparative political economy of development with a focus on China and Asia; state-business relations in Malaysia, Suharto's Indonesia, and the People's Republic of China

Jay Rosengard
Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Will Sack
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences 
Environmental and Social History of East Asia and Maritime Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia.

Teren Sevea
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Islam and Islamic societies in Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesian, Malaysia and Singapore

Porranee Singpliam
Visiting Scholar 2021-2025, Harvard-Yenching Institute
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Postfeminist media studies, Thai studies, specifically genders/sexualities and social inequalities. Her current research project is on gender and politics entitled "the analysis of neoliberalism and the reconfiguration of gender in the Thai political domain".

Tinnaphop Sinsomboonthong
HYI-NUS Joint Doctoral Scholar Program 2023-2027
Ph.D. Student, Sociology at the National University of Singapore
Queering sociology, sociology of humor, sociology of human rights, postcolonial/decolonial sociology, netnography/digital ethnography, and social movement and activism in Asia, especially Thailand and Singapore

Saly Sirothphiphat
MDiv Candidate, Harvard Divinity School 

Sakti Suryani
Preceptor in Indonesian, Department of South Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Renee Susanto
MDiv, Harvard Divinity School

Russell Taylor
Lecturer in Restorative Dentistry and Biomaterials Sciences, Harvard School of Dental Medicine
Improving dental education in central Vietnam

Karen L. Thornber
Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature, Department of Comparative Literature
Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning
Modern and contemporary literature, media, and cultural history of East, South, and Southeast Asia

Anh Tran
Ph.D. Candidate, Committee on the Study of Religion, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Olivia Champ Tremml
MArch Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Regional use of textiles in architecture; Japan and Thailand

Patrick Vinck
Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard Chan School of Public Health

Nurul Wakhida
Ph.D. Candidate, Public Policy, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Toby Wu
Ph.D. Student, Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Contemporary Art and Media across Southeast Asia, through the Transpacific; Vietnam

Richard Yarrow
Research Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Economic development and policy in China and Southeast Asia; focus on Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Cambodia

Rosa Yi
HYI-NUS Joint Doctoral Scholar Program 2021-2025
Ph.D. Candidate, National University of Singapore
Political ecologies of agrarian commodification and labor migration in Cambodia

Jacqueline Yu
M.A. Candidate, Regional Studies--East Asia, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

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