About me
My main research interests are in socio-political and intellectual change in modern Southeast Asian history, and in Thailand/Siam especially. I am interested in the localisation of Western-derived ideas and practices associated with modernity, including: democratic politics; new relations of country and city in the modern state; poverty, progress and capitalism; revolutions and universal history.
My peer reviewed published work has focused on twentieth century Thai history. I have written on many topics including: fiction and social consciousness; Buddhism and politics; the 1932 Thai revolution; education, state propaganda and democratic ideology; World War II; postwar politics and the police. I have two books, including one sole authored monograph, Amnesia: A History of Democratic Idealism in Modern Thailand (SUNY Press, 2021), that examines the social history of the first fifteen years after the 1932 constitutional revolution in Thailand that ended absolute monarchy and introduced democracy. The tensions unleashed by the 1932 movement, as the events of recent years have made abundantly clear, still powerfully shape Thai society. My other book, The U.S. and the War in the Pacific, 1941-1945 (Routledge, 2021) was coauthored with Murdoch and other History colleagues, and is intended as an undergraduate text introducing students to the complexity of the war in Asia and the Pacific.