Research and Publications

Peer reviewed research articles:

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• ‘Anti-Colonial Mimicry and Phantom Statehood in Borneo,’ Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. Accepted/in press, October 2023.

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• 'Brokering a Postcolonial Malaysia: How Local Elites Shaped the Cobbold Commission, 1961–63,' Critical Military Studies, (2023), pp. 1–18. [https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2023.2268958].

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• "State of Intoxication:" Governing Alcohol and Disease in the Forests of British North Borneo,' eTropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, Vol. 20, No. 1, (2021), pp. 1-21. [https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.20.1.2021.3779].

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• 'The friction of distance in Borneo: Migration, economic change and geographic space in Sabah,' World History Connected, Vol. 17, No. 3, (October 2020). [Link]

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• 'Dimming the Seas around Borneo: Contesting Island Sovereignty and Lighthouse Administration amidst the End of Empire, 1946–1948,' TRaNS: Trans–Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia, Vol. 7, No. 2 (November 2019), pp. 181-207. [doi:10.1017/trn.2019.5]​

 

Online:

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• ​'Xi Jinping's threats of "crushed bodies and shattered bones" are an echo of another violent past,' Hong Kong Free Press, 20 October 2019.

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Current research projects:​

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• Book manuscript: Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965. [In press, spring/summer 2024]

  • This will be the first monograph on the end of empire in Sabah (formerly British North Borneo), and its central but critically understudied role in the formation of the Federation of Malaysia. The project covers the tightening of British imperial control over Sabah during the late-colonial period; the emergence of influential local powerbrokers; the competing attempts by the post-colonial governments of the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaya to incorporate the territory into their respective archipelagic spheres; and finally its merger with the Federation of Malaysia in September 1963. This book argues that each of these factors precipitated a stark increase in foreign, colonial-style influence over Sabah. Alongside this, the project casts crucial light on geopolitical disturbances and rivalries in the South China Sea; the fates of minority and subaltern communities bisected by (post-)colonial borders; and the shifting social, economic, political and environmental landscapes of Southeast Asia.

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Upcoming projects:​

 

• Research article: 'Reconceptualising decolonisation along the edges of empire, 1950s–1960s.​'

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• Second monograph project:  Disorder Rising: How the seeds of illegitimacy and instability were embedded into the postcolonial world order

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