Customary Governance in Post-Independence Timor-Leste: Spirit Ecologies of the House

Andrew McWilliam was Professor of Anthropology at Western Sydney University (2017-2024 – now Adjunct Professor). He is a specialist in the anthropology of Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia and Timor-Leste. Recent publications include: 1) Post-Conflict Social and Economic Recovery in Timor-Leste: Redemptive Legacies, 2020 Routledge; 2) Distilling Livelihoods in Timor‑Leste: Fataluku Ecologies of Practice, Human Ecology, 2022 Vol 50 (4) 606-615.  3) Making Money, Missing Home: Reflections on Timorese Informal Labour Migration to Britain, 2022 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 23:3, 266-285.

Lisa Palmer is a Professor of Environmental Studies in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She has published widely and is the author of an ethnography on people’s complex relations with water in Timor-Leste titled Water politics and spiritual ecology: Custom, environmental governance and development (2015, Routledge) and Island Encounters: Timor-Leste from the outside in (ANU Press, 2021). She is a co-editor of Economic Diversity in Contemporary Timor-Leste (LUP, 2023).