Doreen Lee

Doreen Lee is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northeastern University. Trained as an interdisciplinary scholar in History, Southeast Asian Studies, and Anthropology, her work explores how cities and politics shape daily life in Indonesia. Her research and teaching center the politics of the archive, grassroots expressions of resistance and compliance, and the significance of Southeast Asia as a font for anthropological theory. Her award-winning first book Activist Archives: Youth Culture and the Political Past in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2016) traces the nationalist origins of contemporary youth politics that enabled the transition from authoritarianism to democracy in Indonesia. Her second book The Urban Grotesque: Jakarta’s Financial Lives is under contract with Duke University Press. It examines the techniques of financial survival and collective belonging forged by ordinary people in one of the world’s largest, densest, and most unequal cities. Professor Lee’s latest research interests include archival projects on the social history of the 1970s in Indonesia, a largely forgotten era overshadowed by state-led developmentalism and internationalist cultural norms. A second ongoing project concerns the prevalence of abandoned spaces and urban ruins in urban Indonesia. For recent publications, please see Professor Lee’s essays in Current History and INDONESIA journal.