Michael Rose

I am an anthropologist by training with a PhD from the Australian National University. Prior to starting my PhD in 2013 I worked various jobs in policy, agriculture, international development and education throughout Eurasia and Australia, as well as spending periods on the dole, in the precariat, and travelling.

Since July 2022 I have been working in a fixed term position as a research associate at the University of Adelaide, seeking to better understand, and map, statecraft in the Pacific.

This contract will end in July 2024 and I'm looking for another job. Preferably as an academic, although I could probably also do journalism or applied research. If anyone reading this has any ideas or job opportunities feel free to get in touch with me by email or through Twitter. Happy to help write/apply for grants and that kind of thing too.

Before coming to The University of Adelaide I was a fellow at the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre researching workers from Timor-Leste in Australia under the various Pacific Australia Labour Mobility programs. In particular I focused on the pedagogical aspects of the workers' presence in Australia, and trying to better understand how their experiences as individuals in doing neoliberal wage labor are changing (and not changing) the broadly collective frameworks that have historically dominated their home context.

Aside from these main projects other research interests include: urbanisation in Southeast Asia, development, religious syncretism, ritualised agriculture, medical pluralism, the ontological turn, diasporic and transnational communities, Timor-Leste, Eastern Indonesia, the Atoni Pah Meto, activist anthropology and narrative ethnography. Though I has published mostly on Timor-Leste, recent work as broached areas as diverse as artisanal mining, statecraft in the Pacific, and gene technology regulation and I am always interested in potential collaborations outside this field.