|
||
Professor James WarrenPhD (SE Asian History) ANU 
For the past Forty years a passion for a forgotten past of ordinary people who have stood outside history and the recovery of a whole set of cultural-ecological relations have been a central preoccupation running through my research, writing and teaching. This approach to writing Southeast Asian History in an ethnographic grain has all been context-sensitive with a strong cultural-ecological orientation. Beside English, I speak and/or read five languages for research and teaching purposes: Dutch (r), Spanish (s&r), Malay-Indonesian (s&r) Samal-Laut (s), and Japanese (s). The themes identified and addressed in my eight books, whether focussing on state formation, slavery, ethnicity, migration and urbanisation, prostitution and suicide are all trans-historical and trans-cultural. My current research on the environment -human nexus concerning the impact of cyclonic storms in the Philippines over five centuries, extends my methodology and research to the history of environmental change in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean world more generally. This interdisciplinary approach in diversity of method and objects of analyses in the writing and interpretation of Southeast Asian History has enabled me to render a portrait of Southeast Asians living in a complexly textured world of exceptional natural forces, large power constellations, intimate social relations and deep moral dilemmas. Professor Warren has held positions at the ANU, Yale University and as a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University and the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He is a Research Associate of the Asia Research Centre ,Murdoch University , and , The Indian Ocean World Centre, MC Gill University. He has been awarded grants by the Social Science Research Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Australia Research Council and the United States Library of Congress, and is a Fellow of The Australian Academy of the Humanities. Professor Warren's major publications include, The North Borneo Chartered Company's Administration of the Bajau 1878-1909 (1971) ; The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898 (1981); Rickshaw Coolie: A People's History of Singapore,1880-1940 (1986); At the Edge of Southeast History (1987); Ah Ku and Karayuki-San :Prostitution and Singapore Society,1870-1940 (1993); The Sulu Zone, the World Capitalist Economy and the Historical Imagination (1998); Iranun and Balangingi: Globalization ,Maritime Raiding and the Birth of Ethnicity (2001); and, Pirates ,Prostitutes and Pullers Explorations in the Ethno- and Social History of Southeast Asia (2008). In 2003, James Warren was awarded the Centenary Medal of Australia for service to Australian Society and the Humanites in the study of Ethnohistory. He teaches units on Southeast Asian social history ,on researching and writing history in a trans disciplinary context , and, on colonialism, literature and social context.
|
