Brunel University

Faculty Member, Anthropology

Other Affiliations: University of Cambridge, Social Anthropology

Lecturer in Anthropology

About

I'm a social anthropologist lecturing at Brunel University and affiliated with the University of Cambridge. Since 2004, I've worked in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, studying conversion to Christianity, ethnic citizenship and cultural consciousness among rural Bidayuh communities.

In the last few years, I've also begun two new research projects:

i) an ongoing exploration of landscape, affect, memory and morality among four Bidayuh villages involved in a dam-construction and resettlement scheme (http://tinyurl.com/7z7rlpr),
and more recently...

ii) a social anthropological study of orang-utan conservation as a trans-regional phenomenon in both the UK and Borneo (http://tinyurl.com/83jhkfz).

My other research and teaching interests include materiality, artefact-oriented theory, the body, photography and museology. I have a strong interest in the activities of "indigenous museums" around the world, and have recently been involved in a number of collaborations with such institutions in Sarawak and Nepal.

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Selected publications

Books
- Chua, L. and M. Elliott, eds. Forthcoming [2013] Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering After Alfred Gell [working title]. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
- **JUST PUBLISHED** Chua, L. 2012. The Christianity of culture: conversion, ethnic citizenship, and the matter of religion in Malaysian Borneo. Contemporary Anthropology of Religion series. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. (http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=529290)
- Chua, L., J. Cook, N. Long and L. Wilson, eds. Forthcoming [2012]. Southeast Asian Perspectives on Power. London: Routledge.
- Chua, L., C. High and T. Lau, eds, 2008. How do we know? Evidence, ethnography, and the making of anthropological knowledge. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Articles
- Chua, L. Forthcoming [2012]. ‘Speaking of continuity… Religious change and moral dilemmas among Christian Bidayuhs in Malaysian Borneo’. American Ethnologist 39 (2).
- Chua, L. 2011. ‘Soul encounters: Emotions, corporeality, and the matter of belief in a Bornean village’. Social Analysis 55 (3): 1-17.
- Chua, L. 2009. ‘To know or not to know? Practices of knowledge and ignorance among Bidayuhs in an “impurely” Christian world’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2): 332-348.
- Chua, L. 2009. ‘What’s in a (big) name? The art and agency of a Bornean photographic collection’. Anthropological Forum 19 (1): 33-52.
- Chua, L. 2007. ‘Fixity and flux: Bidayuh (dis)engagements with the Malaysian ethnic system’. Ethnos 72 (2): 262-288.