Sophie Chao
Sophie Chao seeks to understand how the Marind people of Papua conceive their relations with what we call nature and the way they perceive imposed oil palm estates, work that has contributed to her Social Anthropology PhD at Macquarie University.
Previously she worked for several years at FPP supporting forest peoples threatened by oil palm and sugar plantations in Sumatra, Borneo and Papua. Prior to that her Master’s dissertation at Oxford was on the ‘couvade’ (ritual for men accompanying their wife in child birth) and before that she worked in Tibet. She now teaches at Sydney University. She has dual French and Taiwanese nationality and speaks Chinese, French, Spanish, Tibetan and Bahasa Indonesia.