Academy Fellow

Professor James J. Fox was Director of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies from 1999 to 2006; previously he was also Head of the Department of Anthropology in the Division of Society and Environment within the School. His general interests are in all aspects of Indonesian society. His area interests are in Java and in the islands of eastern Indonesia, particularly Timor including Timor Leste. He has also been involved for many years in the Project of Comparative Austronesian Studies at the Australian National University. His policy research has been on agriculture and environment management, having worked on an array of national programs for almost a decade as a consultant in the Indonesian Ministry of Finance. He was also an international observer and consultant in the processes that led to the independence of Timor Leste. On retirement, he embarked on a project to record the oral poetry of the island of Rote in eastern Indonesia, bringing as many as eight or nine elderly poets to Bali for a succession of nine recording sessions. In 2014, he published a first volume based on this research, Explorations in Semantic Parallelism (ANU Press) and will shortly publish a second volume, Master Poets, Ritual Masters (ANU Press). His work on issues in the comparative study of the Austronesian-speaking populations from Madagascar to Easter Island remains a contining research concern.

KNAW (Kon.Ned Akademie van Wettenschappen)