After completing my MPhil in Asian Studies at Leiden University, I began my PhD amid the dreaming spires of Oxford. Being part of an interdisciplinary project featuring archaeologists, linguists, plant scientists, and geneticists opened my eyes to the benefits of collaboratively addressing big questions. My first monograph examines loanwords for plants, spices, and maritime terms as a means of reconstructing inter-ethnic encounters across the Indian Ocean. It made me realize how interconnected Southeast Asia had been with other parts of the world since the first centuries CE and how historical linguistics can provide novel insights into complex issues of migration and cultural contact. At the same time, I became aware of the interdependence of textual and non-textual sources. Oral traditions, music, textile, food practices, and various other forms of knowledge deserve serious consideration to understand human activities in all their diversity.
Back in Holland, my path eventually led me back to KITLV. For several years, I focused on the language history of Malay, specifically the variety used in Chinese-Indonesian circles. This work has resulted in three books and has enabled me to collaborate with wonderful colleagues in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and the U.S. through a shared interest in these unique “Sino-Malay” books, newspapers, and other texts published since the 1870s. Much fascinating historical detail about everyday life in late-colonial Indonesia can still be unearthed by examining this overlooked material, which provides a complementary perspective to the much better–explored European publications and archives.
A more recent direction in my academic journey is that of culinary history. Having spent considerable time examining lexical borrowing, the archaeology of food mobility, and textual sources in various languages, I have recently sought to integrate these strands of evidence to study Indonesian cuisines in relation to the wider world. In my latest research endeavor, the ERC-funded TASTE project, I explore how Indonesian cuisines have developed and adapted to local circumstances in the “diaspora”, specifically Suriname, Sri Lanka, and South Africa. What insights will these specific food patterns provide about culinary change and the broader workings of taste?
My enduring interest in the Indian Ocean, a vast network linking Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, West Asia, East Africa, and, arguably, the entire globe, continues to shape much of my work. I regularly collaborate with colleagues from across the world, exploring innovative approaches to Indian Ocean Studies that prioritize co-creation of knowledge among individuals and institutions within the region, rekindling the ancient ties that once united these areas. I have co-organized virtual seminars and contributed to a number of engaging roundtables, all with the aim of fostering lasting networks that transcend institutional and disciplinary silos.
Since September 2022, I’ve had the exciting opportunity to work as an adjunct professor in the Department of Indonesian at Universitas Negeri Malang (UM). This appointment allows me to gradually return to my first academic interest, the Javanese language, in collaboration with my new colleagues in Malang. I look forward to spending many summers studying the linguistic (and culinary!) landscape of East Java.
With Jiří Jákl, ‘Ruminant relations: Old Javanese vignettes on cattle management and milk products’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 144-2: 231-58, 2024.
‘Gastronomy under duress: Connected “Indonesian” food practices in Suriname, Sri Lanka, and South Africa’, in: Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya & Beheroze Shroff (eds.), Legacies of trade and empire: Breaking silences, pp. 96-126. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023.
‘Chineseness in Sino-Malay printing: A triptych of self-criticism’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 24-4: 678-693, 2023.
‘Contacts, cosmopoleis, colonial legacies: Interconnected language histories’, in: David Henley & Nira Wickramasinghe (eds.), Monsoon Asia: A reader on South and Southeast Asia, pp. 137-154. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2023.
‘Qaliyya: The connections, exclusions, and silences of an Indian Ocean stew’, Global Food History 8-2: 106-127, 2022.
‘Urban life in two 1920s Sino-Malay poems’, Prism 19-2: 454-473, 2022.
With Melita Tarisa, ‘”The screaming injustice of colonial relationships”: The roots of Chinese anti-racist activism in the Netherlands’, Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia 177-1: 27-61, 2021.
With Jiří Jákl, ‘The rise of the chef in Java’, Global Food History 6-1: 3-21, 2020.
‘Sailors, tailors, cooks and crooks: A vocabulary of neglected lives in Indian Ocean ports’, Itinerario 42-3: 516-548, 2018.