Colum Graham

Assistant Professor - China & Global Development at University of Cambridge An academic position as a Assistant Professor - China & Global Development is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.

If you're looking for an academic Chinese Politics job, apply to this one:

www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQT568/a...

The Strait of Hormuz is closed just as spring planting starts. Here's a quick illustrated guide on how 'warflation' will make your food more expensive later this year: newsletter.rajpatel.org/p/how-the-wa...

By "non-hegemony", I wonder if the authors are really making a case about the anarchical society?

Finance in the Dark | Lenore Palladino | Finance in the Dark An opaque sector is reshaping the US. Only ambitious regulatory reform can check its power.

The $16.6 trillion in net assets held by private funds in 2025 were ultimately managed by just four thousand registered advisors.

New from Lenore Palladino, on the unregulated finance at the heart of the American economy. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/fin...

Please join in person at MIT on Friday, February 27 for a fantastic lineup of speakers—including Prakash Kumar, Sigrid Schmalzer, Micah Muscolino, Benjamin Siegel, and Heather Roller—exploring conservation, ecology, and food production in China&India. Hope to see you there!

Artisanal oilfields of Wonocolo

At the artisanal oilfields of Wonocolo again late in the afternoon.

A lot of claims recently about the emergence of "tech feudalism". Regular (garden variety...?) "feudalism" in contemporary times seems overlooked. "Civil oligarchy" may be interlocked with modernization processes, but not all oligarchs are civil or perhaps even see themselves as civilians.

View from near the Kendeng range

Misty morning here

Hi @tompepinsky.com from cosmopolitan rural Java where many millions persist in the countryside (often with migratory experiences) and few protest vote against urban chauvinism... 🤔

“Decolonizing the North, Cracking the Federation: Inside PAS’s History War (and Madani’s Response)” By Amrita Malhi This paper examines how Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) is transforming its northern regional strength into a nationwide “Green Wave” by fusing electoral strategy, cultural production and historical revi...

www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-com...

"...the inclination among some senior clergy is to blame a few bad eggs for misbehaviour in the monkhood, rather than organisational failings that permit so-called “mafia monks” to thrive." www.economist.com/asia/2026/01...

Coffee

Station Nganjuk

Back

View of the sea from behind the lighthouse at Marino

Back in Adelaide briefly. Happy New Year to all!

Almost 400 household surveys... Not yet finished. Some elusive larger landholders remain.

On the need for a renewed democratic universalism - Overland literary journal If we’re to emerge from this awful spiral, in which one form of identitarian chauvinism spurs the next, we’ll only do so on the basis of a very different politics: one that takes for granted the abili...

overland.org.au/2025/12/on-t...

Front cover of The Division of Rationalized Labor. The cover includes four pictures: pen and paper, microscope, factory tower, police badge. Modern-looking yellow lines and graphs are superimposed.

My new book, The Division of Rationalized Labor, is now shipping! A brief summary of the argument to follow…

Yes, that one looks well reasoned. So we should expect the WA AI Hub one to have the most influence then...

Do you like any of the submissions to the parliamentary inquiry "on building Asia capability" that closed yesterday?

US accused of plotting false-flag operation to frame Venezuela Venezuela says it has thwarted what it calls a CIA-linked plot to attack a US warship anchored in Trinidad.

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10... 🤔

Journal of Agrarian Change: Vol 25, No 4 The Journal of Agrarian Change (JOAC) is an agricultural and rural development journal leading the field of agrarian political economy.

Hi All! The new issue of Journal of Agrarian Change (25:4) is out now with an entirely open access special section on Land and Labour in Indonesia (among other goodies)... please do check it out: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14710366...

The Spread of Soy in South America Grasslands, savannas, and dry forests have become popular places to grow soy.

Cropland area nearly doubled in South America between 2000 and 2019 - the largest relative increase in the world. Soybean production replaced rainforests, grasslands & savannas. earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/14962... As China refuses U.S. soybeans, this puts more pressure on natural ecosystems.

The planet, and human social life, depend on peasant farmers | Aeon Essays Far from being a relic of the past, peasants are vital to feeding the world. They need to be supported, not marginalised

Without peasants, the global economy could not function, and our natural systems would collapse. Life still depends on the peasantry, and we are all affected by the fact that it is today in an acute crisis

Rural Village Study in Vietnam: Finding the Balance between Researching Specific Issues and Asking Big Questions Masayuki Yanagisawa (Environmental History in Southeast Asia, Vietnamese Studies) In the 1990s, when

Enjoyed this post by Masayuki Yanagisawa and agree with his point about asking big questions. I also like the comparative photo arrangements! newsletter.cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/nl-83/yan... @cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Technologies of dispossession: comparative analysis of frontier-making and state power in Indonesia This article examines land dispossession in Indonesia through a conjunctural comparison of two frontier regimes: a long-standing commodity frontier in South Sulawesi and a rapidly assembled infrast...

My first-ever, single-authored article is out in the Journal of Peasant Studies! Comparing sugar and infrastructure frontiers, it explores how technologies of dispossession shape frontier-making and state power in Indonesia across scale and time.

Read it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

It’s August, which means a new issue of Mekong Review 🥳

In this issue: young K-pop stans in Myanmar join resistance efforts, the contestation of Indonesia’s history, an interview with Saigon Soul Revival… and more!

Order online: ko-fi.com/s/a3e8a4c60d

Has meritocracy gotten the better of our universities? Why events at ANU are grounds for hope - ABC Religion & Ethics It’s not every day that the students and staff of a university succeed in forcing a vice-chancellor from office — that’s what happened last week at ANU, but why did change take so long when it was cle...

www.abc.net.au/religion/anu...

Good piece by Nick Cheesman from my old department at ANU @ouranu.bsky.social

My first book, Socializing Land: Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos (University of Hawai'i Press, 2025), exists in this world!

Check it out at: uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/social...

1/4

My take on the recent protests in Indonesia

www.newmandala.org/mass-protest...