A geographer and an Indonesianist by training, David Henley has a broad range of research interests spanning the politics, history, geography and sociology of Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia. Within Indonesia he has a special interest the island of Sulawesi. He previously worked as lecturer at Griffith University in Brisbane, as researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden, and as research fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore.

From 2006 to 2012 he was Southeast Asia coordinator for Tracking Development: an international, multidisciplinary research project, funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, comparing development policy and performance in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. His most recent research has been on the politics of religious sound in Indonesia, on Southeast Asian regional identity, and on cultures of the human body in Southeast and Northeast Asia.

Research interests

• Nationalism and regionalism
• Environmental, demographic and agricultural history
• Sustainability and natural resource management
• State formation and colonial expansion
• Economic development and finance