Chu studies how Malaysia’s novel human-primate interactions shape power dynamics of land-use management. Specifically, she examines how free-ranging dusky langur and macaque bodies, physiologies, economic valuations, and cultural histories intersect within Malaysia’s plantation economy. Through following scientists, urban residents, property developers, religious temple workers, and free-ranging monkeys in compact urban areas, Chu examines how the political management of primatological behavioral data shapes primate sociality representations and speculative policy tools for assessing financial risks in urban development. Her dissertation research is supported by the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Emslie Horniman Award, High Meadows Environmental Institute Hack Award, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), Internews Malaysia/European Union, Dean’s Fund for Scholarly Travel, Council on Science and Technology (CST), and others. Making science accessible, her journalistic bylines have been cited on Science and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s bioRxiv.

The body is a theory of the world. Immersion, through lived experience, is one of the earliest referential points in shaping how we navigate society. Deeply inspired by this, Chu is a marathon runner, moshes in punk shows that do good politics, and does ceramics in her free time.

Some things I’ve been recently working on:

• Chairing a roundtable entitled “ Asian and Asian/American Hauntings: Ghosts in/as Multispecies Theory” and presenting a poster “Seeing Primates, Making Primatology” at the 2025 American Anthropological Association (AAAs) Meeting in New Orleans.

• Presenting at the Company of Biologists’ “Integrative Ecology in the Global South” Workshop in March 2026, Assam, India.

• Presenting a paper at Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica’s “Sino-spheres: A Workshop for Chinese Environmental Humanities and Social Science” in March 2026, Taiwan.