I earned my B.A. in Asian Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra (1995) and got my Ph.D. in Southeast Asian History from the University of Sydney (2001). I came to Princeton in 2005 and have been looking back wistfully ever since. My last book, Under Empire (Columbia, 2022), looks at two centuries of interactions between Muslim subjects of empires and nation states. It has pictures and a very thick index. 

Current Projects

I am working rather haphazardly on a history of the Cocos Islands at present. Keywords will include slavery, copra, and intrigue. Perhaps sand.

Teaching Interests

I teach courses on the history and historiography of Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. I may yet add Australia into the mix given my interest in Cocos. I am  not actively recruiting graduate students at present.

Selected Articles

"Subjects of an Orientalist Despot: John Ross and the ‘Malaynesian’ People of the Northeastern Indian Ocean, 1812–54", Indian Economic and Social History Review. Forthcoming, 2025.