Niki Alsford is Professor of Anthropology and Human Geography, and Director for the Institutes for the Study of the Asia Pacific (ISAP), and the Institute for Area and Migration Studies (AMIS) at the University of Central Lancashire. He is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS and an Associate Member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. In 2023, he was selected as the Ewha Global Fellow at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Alsford's research focuses primarily on Taiwan, Korea, and the Pacific Islands. He is the book series editor for the Taiwan Series at BRILL, the Korean series at Routledge, and a new series on Asia Pacific Cultures, Communities, and Landscapes at Palgrave Macmillan. Alsford is the author of Taiwan Lives: A Socio-Political History, published by the University of Washington Press in 2024.
Alsford’s research focuses primarily on comparative anthropology within the Asia Pacific region. Chief among these is an engagement with Austronesian migration and the maritime cultures of Pacific islands. His present work is bridging a cognitive divide in environmental discussions between Indigenous knowledge and climate science. Alsford is a registered… Read more
Occupation: Professor of Anthropology and Human Geography
Countries of expertise: American Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Japan, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, North Korea, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Tuvalu
Rodolfo Maggio is an anthropologist of the Asia-Pacific region currently working at the University of Helsinki. In the past, he taught anthropology at the University of Turin and has worked as a Special Foreign Researcher at Waseda University (2019-20), Tokyo, and as a Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (2015-18). Maggio's ethnographic expertise centers on the Solomon Islands, where she has conducted immersive fieldwork exploring postcolonial tensions, cultural practices, and social conflicts. Her forthcoming work examines witchcraft accusations by covering visible and invisible dimensions of witch hunts in postcolonial contexts. He addresses land tenure disputes by tracing the history of land policy in Solomon Islands and analyzes internal relocation, highlighting adaptations of "home" amid displacement. Recent pieces on the 2021 Honiara riots and Malaita's renegade status further illuminate risks of retaliation, political subjectivation, and multi-ethnic nation-state dynamics. On child protection, he critiques early intervention programs in Ireland and the UK, linking austerity to perinatal mental health and ethics in ethnographic studies of mothers and services. He tackles decolonial discourse analysis of media, with a focus on Chinese influence in… Read more
Occupation: University Researcher (Social and Cultural Anthropology)
Countries of expertise: Finland, Italy, Solomon Islands, United Kingdom