Michael Eilenberg

I am Associate Professor in Anthropology at School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University. My primary research interests’ center on issues of state formation, sovereignty, autonomy, citizenship, agrarian expansion and climate politics in frontier regions of Southeast Asia. In particular I investigate state-society dynamics in the Malaysian and Indonesian borderlands on the island of Borneo. Within this research frame, I have been dealing with different transnational processes such as illicit cross-border trade, labour migration, and other kinds of cross-border movements. Especially the anthropology of borderlands and borders is central to my analysis of the different practices and strategies taking place along Southeast Asia’s borders. This approach show how seemingly marginal and isolated populations, such as many border people, are shaped in national and transnational dialogues.

www.eilenberg.dk