SEAP Core Faculty
Abby Cohn

Professor, Linguistics
Abby Cohn is a professor of linguistics and Southeast Asian studies. Her research interests include the Austronesian languages of Indonesia, with a particular focus on their phonetics, phonology, and morphology.
Additional Information
Eric Tagliacozzo

Director, Comparative Muslim Societies Program
Eric Tagliacozzo is the John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the director of the Einaudi Center's Comparative Muslim Societies Program and a core faculty member of the Southeast Asia Program and South Asia Program.
His research centers on the history of people, ideas, and material in motion in and around Southeast Asia, especially in the late colonial age.
Geographic Research Area: Southeast Asia, South Asia
Teaching/Research Interests: Migration and trade, material history, Silk Road, Indian Ocean
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- CMSP Director
- SAP Core Faculty
- SEAP Core Faculty
- Einaudi Faculty Leadership
- Executive Committee
Contact
Email: et54@cornell.edu
Shaoling Ma

Associate Professor, Asian Studies
Shaoling Ma is an interdisciplinary scholar and critical theorist of global Chinese history, literature, and media. At the broadest level, she is drawn to historical periods when geopolitical, socio-economic, and technological developments appear to provide external vantage points from which to navigate the landscape of cultural production, while, in fact, being resolutely embedded in the latter. Ma's teaching and research interests include late nineteenth-century to contemporary Chinese and Southeast Asian cultural productions, media studies, and critical theory.
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Kathryn Fiorella

Director, Migrations Program
Kathryn Fiorella is an associate professor of public and ecosystem health in the College of Veterinary Medicine. Her research interests include planetary health/one health, fisheries, livelihoods, HIV/AIDS, nutrition and environmental change.
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Juno Salazar Parreñas

Associate Professor, Science and Technology Studies and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies
Juno Salazar Parreñas is a feminist science studies scholar who examines human-animal relations, environmental issues, and efforts to institutionalize justice. Parreñas’ book, Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Duke UP, 2018) received the 2019 Michelle Z.
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Andrew C. Willford

Professor, Anthropology
Andrew C. Willford is a professor of anthropology and Asian studies at Cornell University. His latest book, The Future of Bangalore’s Cosmopolitan Pasts: Civility and Difference in a Global City (University of Hawaii, 2018) examines the politics of language, religion, identity, and belonging in Bangalore, India. His previous research focused on forms of Tamil and Hindu displacement, revivalism, and identity politics in Malaysia.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- SAP Core Faculty
- SEAP Core Faculty
Contact
Email: acw24@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-255-2686
Kaja Maria McGowan

Associate Professor, History of Art
Kaja McGowan’s studies the reciprocal relationships between neighboring countries in South and Southeast Asia. Her research explores the flow of ideas and artifacts along this highway—architecture, bronzes, textiles, ceramics, performance traditions, and visualizations of texts like Panji Malat, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. The reciprocal flow accounts for the shaping of ideas and the development of styles across vast geographical and historical distances.
Geographic Research Area: India and Indonesia
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- SAP Core Faculty
- SEAP Core Faculty
Contact
Email: kmm22@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-255-7068
Anne M. Blackburn

Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Asian Studies
Anne M. Blackburn the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities of South Asia studies and Buddhist studies in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University. She received her BA from Swarthmore College and MA and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago. Blackburn studies Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, with a special interest in Buddhist monastic culture and Buddhist participation in networks linking Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia before and during colonial presence in the region.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- SAP Core Faculty
- SAP Advisory Council
- SEAP Core Faculty
Contact
Email: amb242@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-254-6501
Marina Welker

Professor, Anthropology
Marina Welker is a professor in the Department of Anthropology. Her research centers on the ethical relationship between business and society. Her first project was an ethnographic study of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) industry that creates and installs voluntary social and environmental codes of conduct and practices among corporations. In adopting CSR, corporations internalize and set to new purposes ethical discourses derived from activists and the development industry (e.g.
Additional Information
Thuy Tranviet

Senior Lecturer, Vietnamese
Thuy Tranviet has been teaching Vietnamese in the Department of Asian Studies since 2000. She teaches Vietnamese at all levels, including advanced courses in newspaper reading and Vietnamese contemporary literature.
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- SEAP Core Faculty
- SEAP Language Instructor
Contact
Email: tdt5@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-254-6715