People
The program’s core team consists of seven researchers from Europe and Southeast Asia and two research assistants. In addition, the program has an International Advisory Board consisting of four prominent scholars in global history and the history of international law and international relations, as well as a broad network of associated scholars and experts.
Research team members (left to right): Tamara Ann Tinner, Ariel Lopez, Eleonora Poggio, Hans Hägerdal, Birgit Tremml-Werner, Maarten Manse, Stefan Amirell, Simon Ottosson.
Research team
To read more about the team members and their research, click on their names.
Stefan Amirell
Principal investigator
Stefan Eklöf Amirell is a professor of global history at Linnaeus University and the director of the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. His research interests include piracy and comparative colonial history in Southeast Asia with a focus on the long nineteenth century. He is the author of Pirates of Empire (Cambridge UP 2019) and a co-editor of Piracy in World History (Amsterdam UP 2021) (both open access).
Hans Hägerdal
Co-investigator
Hans Hägerdal is a professor of history at Linnaeus University and the chair of the history discipline at the Department of Cultural Sciences. Among his research interests are colonial contact zones in maritime Southeast Asia with a particular focus on eastern Indonesia, Chinese history, and the history of slavery and slave trade in the Indian Ocean World. He is the author of Savu: History and Oral Tradition on an Island of Indonesia (co-written with Geneviève Duggan; NUS Press, 2018) and a co-editor of the open access volume Piracy in World History (Amsterdam UP 2021).
Preedee Hongsaton
Co-investigator
Dr Preedee Hongsaton is a research fellow at the Department of History, Lund University. He got his PhD at the Australian National University in 2015 and has published extensively on the social, political and religious history of Thailand and the country's relations with other parts of the world. He is interested in empires and imperialism in the Global South during the last four centuries and their geopolitical impact today.
Ariel Lopez
Co-investigator
Dr Ariel Lopez is an associate professor at the Asia Center of the University of the Philippines (Diliman). He obtained his PhD in History at Leiden University in 2018. His research interests include colonital and maritime history with a focus on insular Southeast Asia.
Eleonora Poggio
Co-investigator
Dr Eleonora Poggio is a researcher in history at Linnaeus University. She obtained her PhD in History at Pablo de Olavide University, Seville, in 2016. Dr Poggio is an expert on Spanish colonialism and her research interests include migration, social categorization, membership regimes, and identification in the Spanish colonial empire. She is the author of the open access monograph Comunidad, pertenencia, extranjería. El impacto de la migración laboral y mercantil de la Región del Mar del Norte en Nueva España, 1550-1640 (Leuven University Press, 2022).
Birgit Tremml-Werner
Co-investigator
Dr Birgit Tremml-Werner is an associate professor in history at Linnaeus University, working on a project entitled “Encountering Diplomacy in Early Modern Southeast Asia”, financed by the Swedish Research Council. Her research interests include the history of colonial encounters, cross-cultural negotiations, early modern Japan, and global intellectual history. She is the author of the open access monograph Spain, China, and Japan in Manila, 1571-1644: Local Comparisons and Global Connections (Amsterdam UP 2015).
Maarten Manse
Postdoctoral researcher
Dr Maarten Manse lectures at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and conducts postdoctoral research at Linnaeus University. He obtained his PhD at Leiden University in 2021. His research interests include the political mechanisms and legal dimensions of imperialism and the global circulation of colonial knowledge and in early-modern and modern Southeast Asia. He is the author of the research article "Two Sides of the Same Coin: Direct Taxation and Negotiated Governance in Colonial Indonesia" (Journal of Social History, 56:2 (2022): 411-438).
Isak Kronberg
Doctoral Student
Isak is a doctoral student in the Global Humanities PhD Program at the Department of Cultural Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Linnaeus University. He is also a member of the Linnaeus University Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial studies and part of the Historical Treaties of Southeast Asia project. Isak’s current PhD project focuses on gender, diplomacy and imperialism and how non-male actors and transgender practices shaped the colonial world of 19th century maritime Southeast Asia.
Simon Ottosson
Research assistant
Simon Ottosson is a doctoral student in political science at Linnaeus University. His BA’s thesis explored the signing and subsequent abrogation of the 1899 Treaty between the Sultanate of Sulu and the United States. A revised version of the thesis was published under the title "Den bortglömda förhandlaren" (Historisk studenttidskrift, 3:1 (2022): 142-152).
Johan T. Erlandsson-Diaz
Reseach assistant
Johan T. Erlandsson-Diaz is a research assistant at Linnaeus University. He has a MA in Cultural Studies with a specialization in Religious Studies. His BA thesis in history explored the conflicts surrounding interpretation and translation between the U.S. Government and the tribe of Kiowa during the Jerome Commission 1892.
International Advisory Board
David Armitage
Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History, Department of History, Harvard University
Saliha Belmessous
British Academy Global Professor at the University of Oxford and Associate Professor of History at the University of New South Wales
Lauren Benton
Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law, Department of History, Yale University
Edward Keene
Associate Professor of International Relations, Department of Politics and International Relations, Christ Church College, University of Oxford
