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Sophie Chao

Sophie Chao is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney. She is author of In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua (Duke, 2022), Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger (Duke, 2025), and Plantations: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence (Cambridge, 2026), and co-editor of The Promise of Multispecies Justice (Duke, 2022) and Worlds Beyond Bios: The Life of Matter and the Matter of Life (Duke, 2026).

The culture and politics of hunger in West Papua

/ / ASAA prizes, Indonesia

In the Indonesian-occupied region of West Papua, large-scale deforestation to make way for agribusiness plantations under government-endorsed development schemes has radically undermined the food security of Indigenous Marind and neighboring communities, who rely primarily on native forests, savannahs, swamps, and wetlands for their daily subsistence. Forest foods including sago, root crops, cassowary, boars and deer […]

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More-Than-Human Becomings with Sophie Chao, Winner of the ECR Book Prize 2024

/ / ASAA prizes

Congratulations on being awarded the ASAA Early Career Book Prize 2024! Can you tell us a bit about the book? What’s the topic explored, and how did you first become interested in the topic? In the Shadow of the Palms is an ethnographic account of one Indigenous community’s encounter with oil palm in the Indonesian-controlled

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In the Shadow of the Palms: Plant-Human Relations Among the Marind-Anim, West Papua – Sophie Chao, John Legge Thesis Prize Winner

/ / Asian development, Environment, Southeast Asia

Can you tell us a bit about your thesis. What’s the problem it explores and what did you find? My thesis, In the Shadow of the Palms: Plant-Human Relations among Marind, West Papua, investigates how Indigenous Marind communities in the Indonesian-controlled region of West Papua experience, conceptualize, and contest the adverse social and environmental impacts

In the Shadow of the Palms: Plant-Human Relations Among the Marind-Anim, West Papua – Sophie Chao, John Legge Thesis Prize Winner Read More »

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