Nicholas Tapp, BA (Hons) (Cantab), MA, PhD (London)
Professor, Department of Anthropology

Email: nicholas.tapp@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

Under a Chiang Ching-kuo Research Project, 'Communal Diasporic Voluntary Public Cultures', I am now examining the impact of returns of overseas migrants to their Asian homelands, in collaboration with Dr Gary Lee. We are working in China, Thailand, Laos and Australia and hope in the future to include Hmong communities in France and the USA.

Research Interests

Hmong; minorities and the state; Southeast Asia and China; religion and development; history, locality, transnationals.

Key Publications

• Sovereignty and Rebellion: the White Hmong of Northern Thailand. Singapore, New York, London, OUP, 1989.
• (ed. with Chien Chiao) Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups in China. Hong Kong, New Asia College, 1989.
• 'Minority Nationality in China: policy and practice' in R.H. Barnes, A. Grey and B. Kingsbury (eds) Indigenous Peoples of Asia, Ann Arbor, Association for Asian Studies, 1995.
• 'Social Aspects of China Fir Plantations in China', The Commonwealth Forestry Review, 74(4), 1996.
• 'Ritual relations and identity: Hmong and others' and 'A new stage in Tai regional studies: the challenge of local histories' in A. Turton (ed.), Civility and Savagery: Social Identity in Tai States, Richmond, Surrey, Curzon, 2000.
• The Hmong of China: Context, Agency and the Imaginary, Brill, Leiden, 2002.

Career Highlights

Pres., Hong Kong Anthropological Society (1986-89); FRAI, FRAS.