Tomas Cole is a postdoctoral fellow, whose research examines the intersection of environments, politics, and cosmologies from an ethnographic perspective. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Myanmar-Thai borderlands and, more recently, Singapore. He completed his PhD in social anthropology at Stockholm University in December 2020, with a focus on Indigenous conservation and environmental peace-building in southeastern Myanmar. In 2023, Tomas began working on a postdoctoral project, funded by the Swedish Research Council and in collaboration with Stockholm University and the Rachel Carson Center. The project compares the differing ways in which humans are learning to negotiate with, make room for, and make peace with mosquitoes across Southeast Asia—from the war-torn highlands of Myanmar to hypermodern Singapore.
RCC Project: Making Peace with Pests: From Conflict to Conviviality with Mosquitoes across Southeast Asia
Selected Publication:
- “‘Power-Hurt’: The Pains of Kindness among Disabled Karen Refugees in Thailand.” Ethnos 85, no. 2 (2020): 224–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2018.1542411.