News

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New Staff

Tamara Jacka has a BA Asian Studies (Hons) from ANU (1987) and a PhD in Asian Studies from the University of Adelaide (1994). Before coming to the ANU in 2001, she taught Chinese language and courses on contemporary Chinese society and politics for ten years at Murdoch University. Her main research interests are in gender relations and social change in contemporary China. She is currently completing one ARC-funded project on Changing Approaches to Gender and Development in Rural China and beginning another on Gender, Family Conflict and Suicide in Rural China. Her publications include Women's Work in Rural China: Change and Continuity in an Era of Reform (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997); On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China (ed. with Arianne Gaetano, Columbia University Press, New York, 2004); and Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Chang (ME Sharpe, Armonk, New York and London, 2006). She last won the American Anthropological Association's Francis Hsu prize for best book in East Asian anthropology in 2007.

Dr Andrew Walker joined PSC as a Senior Fellow at the end of June 2009. Andrew graduated in anthropology from the University of Sydney in 1983. He then spent ten years as a public servant and consultant, ending up as a public transport planner in rural New South Wales. He came to ANU in 1993 to do a PhD in anthropology. This resulted in The Legend of the Golden Boat: Regulation Trade and Traders in the Borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma (1999). Since 2002 he has been working in the Resource Management in Asia Pacific Program (RSPAS, ANU) focusing on environmental management, agricultural transformation and social change in northern Thailand. He co-authored (with Tim Forsyth of the London School of Economics) Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (2008) and edited Tai Lands and Thailand: Community and State in Southeast Asia (2009). He is currently writing a book about supernatural, economic and political power based on his fieldwork in a northern Thai village. Andrew is co-convenor (with Nicholas Farrelly) of 'New Mandala' a blog which provides 'anecdote, analysis and new perspectives on mainland southeast Asia'.

Nicholas Farrelly graduated from the ANU with honours in Asian Studies in 2003. After a period as a research assistant, translator and tutor in various parts of the University he travelled to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. In Oxford he completed an MPhil in Development Studies and is currently finalizing his doctoral qualification. He maintains interests in Thai and Burmese politics and in other social and cultural issues across the length and breadth of mainland Southeast Asia. Nicholas is increasingly focused on issues of conflict and development in northeast India. As part of his role at the ANU, jointly funded by the Faculty of Asian Studies, Nicholas teaches the core courses for the Master of Asia-Pacific Studies program. With Andrew Walker he is the co-founder of 'New Mandala'.

New Students

Chandarith Neak began his studies at PSC in September 2008. Writing on forest sector managements in Cambodia, he received his master of political science from Kobe University, Japan. His PhD thesis focuses on roles of Cambodian military (RCAF) in nation building. He is supported by Harvard Yenching Scholarship.

Prajak Kongkirati is a new PhD student joining PSC in January 2009 He is supported by an Australian Leadership Award of AusAID. He has published widely in the field of Thai politics. His doctoral dissertation research examines patterns of political violence in Thailand, and is motivated by a desire to identify major factors that cause and mitigate election-based political violence.

Emma Campbell joined ANU to begin her PhD research in March 2008. Her research will focus on nationalism in contemporary South Korea with particular reference to reunification. She is supported by a Korean Foundation Postgraduate Fellowship.

Nicholas Cheesman joined PSC in earlier 2008. He is studying rule of law issues in Myanmar (Burma). He has published on monastic schooling and minority identity, and has an MEd from the University of Western Australia and a degree and diploma from the University of Melbourne.

Louise Merrington started her PhD program at PSC in early 2008. Her research interests include contemporary Chinese political and media reform, censorship, state-society relations and the development of new media technology. For her PhD thesis Louise is examining the development of the Chinese propaganda system from the Cultural Revolution to the present.

Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman is a PHD candidate at PSC. His research interests include the history and politics of Southeast and South Asian countries, transnational Islamic political movements such as the Hizb ut-Tahrir, Muslim Brotherhood and the Gulen movement and counter-terrorism.

Students Recently Awarded PhD

MOHAMAD, Marzuki
Communalism, Law and State Power: the Limits of Political Change in Malaysia

DANG, Dinh Trung
Land reforms in South Vietnam, late 1950s-1970s: Political economy of state-society relations on land

TANASALDY, Taufiq
Ethnic Politics in Indonesia: The case of Dayak Politics in West Kalimantan