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About Michele Ford
Professor Michele Ford is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses labor and other social movements in Southeast Asia. Michele is the author of From Migrant to Worker: Global Unions and Temporary Labor Migration in Asia (Cornell ILR Press 2019) and Workers and Intellectuals: NGOs, Trade Unions and the Indonesian Labour Movement (NUS/Hawaii/KITLV 2009), and co-author of Labor and Politics in Indonesia (Cambridge 2020). She is also the editor of Social Activism in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2013) and the co-editor of several volumes including Activists in Transition: Progressive Politics in Democratic Indonesia (Cornell SEAP 2019) and Beyond Oligarchy: Wealth, Power, and Contemporary Indonesian Politics (Cornell SEAP 2014). In addition to her research work, Michele is the President of RC44 (Labor Movements) of the International Sociological Association. She has also engaged in extensive consultancy work for the international labor movement and the Australian government. She currently sits on the Advisory Boards of the Indonesia Project (Australian National University), the Asia Research Institute (National University of Singapore) and the Global Asia Research Center (National Taiwan University).Professor Michele Ford is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia.
NBN Episodes hosted by Michele:
January 12, 2026
Resource Nationalism in Indonesia
In Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State (Cornell UP, 2023), Eve Warburton traces nationalist policy trajectories in I…
July 15, 2025
Judicial Dysfunction in Indonesia
Indonesia's judicial system has long been described as dysfunctional. Many of its problems developed out of decades of authoritarian rule, which began…
May 15, 2025
Strangers in the Family
In Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia (SAPP, 2023), Guo-Quan Seng provides a gendered history of settle…
May 1, 2025
Undermining Resistance
Why do multinational mining corporations use participation to undermine resistance? Do the struggles of local communities, activists and NGOs matter o…
January 19, 2025
Systemic Silencing
The system of prostitution imposed and enforced by the Japanese military during its wartime occupation of several countries in East and Southeast Asia…
November 15, 2024
The Pulse of the Earth
In The Pulse of the Earth: Political Geology in Java (Duke UP, 2023), Adam Bobbette tells the story of how modern theories of the earth emerged from t…
October 15, 2024
Winning by Process
Winning by Process: The State and Neutralization of Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar (Southeast Asia Program Publications/Cornell UP, 2022) asks why the p…
May 14, 2024
Crip Colony
In Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines (Duke UP, 2023), Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the r…
March 15, 2024
Memories of Unbelonging
The ethnic Chinese have had a long and problematic history in Indonesia, commonly stereotyped as a market-dominant minority with dubious political loy…
January 16, 2024
Boys Love Media in Thailand
Thomas Baudinette's Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2023) explores the contou…
September 21, 2023
Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia
Kathrin Eitel's book Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia: Circularity, Waste, and Urban Life in Phnom Penh (Routledge, 2022) examines the recycling …
July 15, 2023
Fixing the Image
Jenna Grant is a cultural anthropologist from the University of Washington and author of Fixing the Image: Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phn…
May 15, 2023
Narrating Democracy in Myanmar
Tamas Wells' book Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers (Amsterdam UP, 2021) analyses wha…
March 15, 2023
Unsettled Frontiers
Like other global frontiers, the Cambodia-Vietnam borderlands are a hotspot for migration, land claims, and markets for newly introduced commodities. …
January 15, 2023
The Made-Up State
In The Made-Up State: Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia (Cornell UP, 2022), Benjamin Hegarty contends that warias, one of Ind…
November 15, 2022
Belitung
In 1998, the Belitung, a ninth-century western Indian Ocean–style vessel, was discovered in Indonesian waters. Onboard was a full cargo load, likely i…
September 15, 2022
To Remain Myself
To Remain Myself: The History of Onghokham (ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series / NUS Press, 2022) is a particularly vivid biography of a remarkab…
July 15, 2022
The Candidate's Dilemma
In The Candidate's Dilemma: Anticorruptionism and Money Politics in Indonesian Election Campaigns (Cornell UP, 2022), Elisabeth Kramer tells the story…
June 15, 2022
Mobilizing for Elections
Politicians in Southeast Asia, as in many other regions, win elections by distributing cash, goods, jobs, projects, and other benefits to supporters, …
May 16, 2022
Projectland
In Projectland: Life in a Lao Socialist Model Village (U Hawaii Press, 2021), anthropologist Holly High combines an engaging first-person narrative of…
March 15, 2022
Repossessing Shanland
Around five million people across Southeast Asia identify as Shan. Though the Shan people were promised an independent state in the 1947 Union of Burm…
January 14, 2022
The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia
Mainland Southeast Asia is one of the most fascinating and complex cultural and linguistic areas in the world. This book provides a rich and comprehen…
November 1, 2021
Youth Culture and Identity in Northern Thailand
Youth Culture and Identity in Northern Thailand (Routledge, 2020) examines how young people in urban Chiang Mai construct an identity at the intersect…
September 1, 2021
Susceptibility in Development
Tanya Jakimow's book Susceptibility in Development: Micropolitics of Local Development in India and Indonesia (Oxford UP, 2020) offers a novel approac…