Keynote Speakers
Professor
Nancy Lee Peluso
Nancy Lee Peluso gained her PhD from Cornell University. She
is Henry J. Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy at
the University of California, Berkeley. A political ecologist,
her research is primarily ethnographic and historical,
studying the social processes that affect the management of
land-based resources. Her work explores various dimensions of
resource access, use, and control, while comparing and
contrasting local, national, and international influences on
management structures and processes. "I ground my analysis of
contemporary resource management policy and practice in local
and regional histories. I am particularly interested in how
social difference – ethnic identity, class, gender – affects
resource access and control. How do government and
non-government institutions and actors define, make claims
upon, contest, and attempt to manage natural resources? In my
early research on forest and agrarian politics and
socio-environmental change in Indonesia, I studied trade in
non-timber forest products in East Kalimantan, village-state
conflicts in the teak and montane forests of Java, the role of
forestry and social forestry in state formation, and changes
in forest management practices and resource rights among
indigenous swidden cultivators in West Kalimantan. The scope
of my research has expanded In the past ten years to include
the projects discussed [here]."
Her many publications include Taking Southeast Asia to Market:
Commodities, People and Nature in a Neoliberal Age (Ed., with Joseph
Nevins, 2008); Hutan Kaya, Rakyat
Melarat: Penguasaan Sumberdaya dan Perlawanan di Jawa (2006), Indonesian
Translation of Rich
Forests, Poor People
(1992) with a new introduction; Borneo
in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation, and
Development, 2nd
edn. (with Christine
Padoch, 2003)
and Violent
Environments (with Michael
Watts, 2001).
Professor
Wan Zawawi Ibrahim
Zawawi Ibrahim received his PhD in Social Anthropology from
Monash University, Melbourne. He currently heads the Sociology
& Anthropology Programme at Universiti Brunei Darussalam,
having previously held senior positions at Universiti Sains
Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak and the National
University of Malaysia. He has researched and published on a
wide range of topics including Malay peasantry and plantation
labour, indigenous communities such as the West Kalimantan
Dayaks, Kadazan Dusun, Penan, Orang Asli, on AIDS, and on
issues of representation and identity both in traditional
communities, and in contemporary Malaysian popular music and
cinema. His current research projects include Youth and music
in Brunei, Kampong Ayer Ethnography, Islamic discourse in
Contemporary Indonesian/Malaysian cinema, and Naysid music in
the New Era. His many published books include Representation,
Identity and Multiculturalism in Sarawak (ed., 2008), Voices
of the Crocker Range Indigenous communities Sabah (2000),
The Malay Labourer (1998), and Cultural
Contestations: Mediating Identities in a Changing Malaysian
Society (ed.,1998). His forthcoming book is an edited
volume, Knowledge and Social Science in a Globalising
World. He has contributed many articles to
international journals, and has delivered conference papers in
Japan, England, Australia, Holland, France, Finland, USA,
India, and Southeast Asia. He is also a cultural activist, and
was involved in conceptualising and organising the
Sarawak Rainforest World Music Festival (1998), the 'Save
Bosnia Concert (1994)' the first Green Concert in Malaysia
(1990), and the Live TV RTM Malaysia Unplugged Palestine
Concert (2009). An award-winning composer and lyricist, his
works have been recorded by Malaysian and Singapore recording
artists. In 1996 he produced Dayung, an
'unplugged' ethnic acoustic CD album featuring his own
compositions, released on the BMG label. For more information
see this
link.
Assoc. Professor
Ulmar Grafe
Ulmar Grafe is
an Associate Professor of biology at the University Brunei
Darussalam. He holds a Masters degree from the University of
Würzburg, Germany and a PhD in Behavioral Ecology from
Cornell University, USA. Prior to coming to UBD he lectured
in Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology at the University of
Würzburg. In his work at Universiti Brunei Darussalam he has
continued to explore his interests in behavioral ecology and
tropical biology. He has researched and published on the
functional role of amphibians in tropical ecosystems and
human altered landscapes, on the behavioral ecology of frogs
and their
parasites, the behaviors of tropical birds, and the
mutualistic relationships existing between animals and
plants, such as that between woolly bats and pitcher plants.
As well as his extensive experience in Brunei, Dr Grafe's
research has taken him to the Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Puerto
Rico, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. More information on his publications and some of his current
research can be found at his personal
website, here.