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.

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 ability to earn money as individuals in a neo-liberal economy is changing (and not changing) the broadly collective frameworks that have historically dominated work and life in Timor.

As of July 2022 I have taken up a new position as a research associate at the University of Adelaide, seeking to better understand, and map, the nature statecraft in the Pacific.

Aside from these main projects other research interests include: labour migration, 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 and gene technology regulation and I am always interested in potential collaborations outside this field.