Chris is a visiting fellow at the Department of Anthropology and Assistant Professorial Research Fellow in the Religion and Global Society Research Unit based at the LSE. His research explores the convergence between global Islamic doctrines and local understandings of piety and faith, and how these come to inform civic values, concepts of religious and political solidarity, and social activism within Southeast Asia.

From a methodological and conceptual standpoint, Chris is interested in investigating how reflexive and diffractive approaches to ethnography can provide a transformative space through which to create new dialogues between anthropological practice and religious doctrines.

He recently published the book Salafism and the State: Islamic Activism and National Identity in Indonesia (2021), which provides an ethnographic examination of the often misunderstood Salafi Islamic movement. The book explores the social, moral, and pedagogical dynamics behind Salafism’s gaining popularity amongst Indonesian youth.  As it explains, Salafi activists strive to create a religious subjectivity that blends global religious doctrine with locally orientated ideas of religious praxis, consumerism, and postcolonial modernity. While this weaving of modern aspiration and religious tradition is at the heart of the Salafi appeal, it ultimately leads to a multifarious and fractured idea of what ‘being Salafi’ ultimately means.  

Chris’ current research is based at the LSE’s Religion and Global Society research unit where he seeks to explore the creation of plural religious spaces in Indonesia and the UK. Chris is particularly interested in the affective geographies that define religious and non-religious encounters, and what these spatial dynamics may tell us about the creation of interconnected but diverse interpretations of plurality, and the emotive spiritual experiences behind them.

Chris has spent over a decade working in Southeast Asia and speaks fluent Indonesian. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, and has worked for a variety of academic, government and non-governmental bodies. This includes working as a Researcher for the Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) at the University of Leiden, and as a Fellow at the LSE’s Department of Methodology.