ASAA Oral History Project Team

Garry describes himself as primarily a political economist whose work is informed by political theory. It was only during his doctoral research, and something by accident, that his work developed an empirical focus on Asia. What began as a thesis that intended to learn how Australian firms were relocating production to (Southeast) Asia sparked an

Jarrah’s Indonesian / Australian background and early childhood years growing up in Bali were formative of his interest in the history of Indonesia. During his PhD studies, under the guidance of Professor Adrian Vickers, he began studying the historical texts of Indonesia; the traditional chronicles and genealogies of Bali, Java and the Malay world. Jarrah

Yamini discusses her expertise as a combination of Animal Studies, Development Studies, and Geography, especially in a South Asian context. Asia – and specifically South Asia/India – has always been central to her work, including what Yamini considers to be her best work (the monograph Mother Cow, Mother India) as well as her forthcoming project

Minerva traces her journey in Asian Studies back to her childhood in Sydney in the 1990s, when her mother insisted she learn Chinese and enrolled her in a Chinese school. As the only white student, she was warmly embraced by the Chinese Australian community—an experience that shaped her enduring commitment to Chinese language and culture.

Liam traces his journey in Asian Studies to a childhood spent in Kathmandu, where his parents worked in international development, and he attended an international school. Returning to Australia for high school, he enrolled in Asian Studies at UWA in the late 1990s. Initially intending to study Hindi, he instead took Indonesian – almost by

Kent traces his journey from growing up in Alaska, where early encounters with Japanese visitors first sparked his curiosity about Asia, to becoming an international lawyer and comparative legal scholar. A chance enrolment in Japanese at Middlebury College led to a study program in Nagoya in the late 1980s, an experience that cemented his commitment