Thomas Kingston (University of California, Berkeley)

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University of California, Berkeley

Thomas Kingston is a PhD student and Berkeley Fellow in South & Southeast Asian Studies with Political Economy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Originally from Yorkshire in the UK, he now finds himself in the Bay Area working on the histories of knowledge, power and capital in colonial era Southeast Asia. Specific interests include the political economy, state and spatial developments in Burma, Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak.

Prior to arriving at Berkeley, Thomas was a Huayu Scholar in Taiwan.
In Taiwan he studied Mandarin at National Taiwan University and National Cheng Kung University. His other languages include French, Burmese and Dutch.

He holds an LLB (Hons) in Law, an MA in Pacific Asian Studies (Distinction) from SOAS and an MPhil in Chinese Philosophy from Renmin. For both of his masters he explored the reception and adaptation of ‘Western’ leftist political and economic thought in non-Western societies in times of immense change – Post-Colonial Burma and Late Qing China respectively. Outside of academia he has worked in Human Rights Law in Cambodia in cooperation with the UNHRC and ILO and is currently a Host on the New Books Network.

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