I am a social and legal historian of Southeast Asia, and I am currently a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Cornell University. My research centers perspectives from the margins of state power to reconceptualize the political event and legal category of decolonization.

Integrating oral history with archival research, I have conducted fieldwork in Australia (Canberra, Christmas Island, and Perth), Malaysia (Ipoh, Johor Bahru, Kampar, Kuala Lumpur, Kuching, Limbang, and Penang), Singapore, and the United Kingdom (London). I research and teach across multiple fields: citizenship and belonging, migration and indigeneity, borders and borderlands, war and militarization, racialization and minoritization, and island spaces in the Indian Ocean.

You can find my writing in publications ranging from The Journal of Asian Studies to the Los Angeles Review of Books. My research is supported by the Social Science Research Councils of the U.S. and Singapore, the American Historical Association, and the Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University, among others. A chapter of my dissertation was awarded the John A. Lent Prize for best paper on Malaysia, Singapore, or Brunei at the Association for Asian Studies in 2025. I am also an editor of the Singapore-based longform print magazine Mynah.

I received my BA in History and my MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago.