Paul Hasan Thung is carrying out ethnographic fieldwork in Kalimantan as part of his PhD thesis. Before coming to Brunel, he studied for a BA in Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsteram, a BSc in Forest and Nature Conservation at Wageningen University, and an MA in Environment, Development and Policy at the University of Sussex. For his MA, he conducted fieldwork among a group of Dayak Tamambaloh in West Kalimantan to see how they reconciled their practice of swidden agriculture with a new and highly politicised ban on burning land. He is also involved as a consultant with the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia, for their project on migration and forests.
His research interests include human-environment relations, conservation, orangutans and development.