Some things I’ve been recently working on:

• Partaking in the 2026 AAA Op-Ed Project, a mentorship program for anthropologists to transform their research into journalistic bylines

• Presenting a paper on property valuations and green urbanisms at the Urbanization Beyond the City: The Making and Mobility of Concepts from Southeast Asia Workshop at Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore in September 2026.

• Presenting a paper in the conference “Breakdown and Reconfiguration” at Cornell University, Kahin Center for Advanced Research in Southeast Asia in October 2026.

• Presenting a paper in the conference “Money and Ecology: Rethinking Value, Exchange, and Sustainability” at The Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies, Lund University in November 2026.

Hi! I’m a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Princeton University and an incoming visiting fellow at Aarhus University.

In my dissertation project, I examine how contemporary patterns of uneven development such as forest fragmentation, human-primate conflict, and land-use governance disputes mutually entangle as a series of capitalist frictions in Malaysia.

My ethnographic fieldwork has been generously supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Gr. 11070), the Royal Anthropological Institute, the High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, amongst others.

I welcome emails regarding mutual research interests. I also welcome questions about applying to graduate school, especially from those who are first-generation scholars and/or scholars based in the Global South. Please feel free to reach out: kym@princeton.edu

The body is a theory of the world. Immersion is one of the earliest referential activities in shaping how we navigate society. In my free time, I’m training for the 2027 Copenhagen Marathon and the 2027 Generali Berlin Half Marathon.