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Core Faculty

SEAP has 28 core members, whose collective knowledge of Southeast Asia amounts to one of the world’s greatest concentrations of expertise on this region. This includes 21 professors, six senior lecturers, and one lecturer. Our language lecturers teach four levels of study in Burmese, Indonesian, Khmer, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

Associate Professor, Performing and Media Arts and Asian American Studies
Christine Bacareza Balance's research focuses on performance studies, popular music/culture studies, critical Filipino/Filipino American studies, and transnational Asian American studies.
Professor, City and Regional Planning
Victoria Beard is interested in the relationship between community-based planning and poverty in the global south. She is a 2021–22 Global Public Voices fellow.
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.

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.

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.

Associate Professor, Anthropology

Magnus Fiskesjö's research concerns ethnic relations and political anthropology in China and Southeast Asia.

H. Stanley Krusen Professor of World Religions, Asian Studies

Trained in classical Islamic studies and the history of Islam in Indonesia - in Italy (University of Rome) and London (SOAS) respectively, Chiara Formichi has held positions in Singapore (post-doctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute), Leiden (research fellow at the KITLV), and at the City

Associate Professor, Asian Studies

Arnika Fuhrmann is an interdisciplinary scholar of Southeast Asia, working at the intersections of the region’s aesthetic and political modernities.

Assistant Professor, Global Development
Jenny Goldstein is interested in environmental conservation and development in the tropics and the role of scientific knowledge in climate change politics.
Curator, Echols Collection

Before taking on the position of curator of the John M. Echols Collection on Southeast Asia, Green worked at Northern Illinois University Libraries as curator of the Donn V. Hart Southeast Asia Collection.