Simon Rowedder

Simon Rowedder is a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore (NUS), where he also previously earned his PhD in 2018. He was formerly Assistant Professor of Development Politics at the University of Passau in Germany. He is affiliated with the NUS–Max Weber Foundation Research Group on Borders, Mobilities and New Infrastructures.

His research interests lie at the intersection of economic anthropology, border studies, and development studies, with a regional specialization in the Sino–Southeast Asian borderlands, particularly focusing on Yunnan, Laos, and Thailand.

His recent scholarly contributions include a monograph titled Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness (2022), and co-editorship of Extracting Development: Contested Resource Frontiers in Mainland Southeast Asia (2022), both reflecting his deep engagement with ethnographic and political-economic perspectives on borderland development.