Sophie Chao

Dr. Sophie Chao is a DECRA Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney, specializing in environmental anthropology and multispecies justice with ethnographic focus on West Papua. Her award-winning research examines intersections of Indigeneity, capitalism, ecology, and health justice in Pacific contexts.

Key research domains include:

• Indigenous experiences of hunger and nourishment in plantation contexts
• Human-plant relations in industrial oil palm landscapes
• Multispecies justice frameworks for decolonial futures
• Political ecologies of racial capitalism in Melanesia

Her publications demonstrate consistent engagement with Plantationocene studies, Indigenous ontologies, and decolonial methodologies. Award-winning books include In the Shadow of the Palms (Duke UP) and the co-edited volume The Promise of Multispecies Justice.

Dr. Chao coordinates undergraduate units including Introduction to Anthropology and The Anthropocene. She currently supervises doctoral research on Indigenous food sovereignty, ancestral memory, and multispecies justice. She co-leads the Sydney Environment Institute's Biocultural Diversities theme and serves on editorial boards for Cultural Anthropology, American Ethnologist, and Oceania. Recent honors include the Paul Bourke Award, Asian Studies Association of Australia ECR Book Prize, Nautilus Gold Award, and Sharon Stephens Prize.