← About me · Public engagement

Leadership as institutional practice

I understand academic leadership as the work of building trustworthy conditions in which people can contribute, develop, and remain answerable to one another. Formal authority matters, but institutions are sustained through mentoring, editorial judgment, shared standards, access to networks, recognition of uneven capability, and the patient creation of pathways. Leadership is therefore relational and institutional rather than simply personal.

Networks and scholarly communities

As Vice-Chair of the Emerging Scholars Network of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, I work within an international community concerned with the unequal conditions under which early-career scholars enter global conversations. My approach emphasizes legibility, access, and continuity: making expectations clearer, opening routes into professional networks, and ensuring that participation does not end with a single event.

I convene the Trust, Culture & Publics Network as a semi-independent transnational space linking communication, sociology, political science, journalism, and public practice. TCPN is not a personal publicity channel or an institutional possession. Its value lies in durable exchange, method development, collaboration, and public-facing intellectual work. A future university-based lab could be affiliated with TCPN while remaining responsible for its own governance, students, projects, and data.

Editorial stewardship and supervision

My editorial roles—including Associate Editor of the Journal of Nusantara Studies, guest editorship of Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South, and board service—have reinforced that standards and intellectual hospitality are not opposites. Editorial institutions should protect rigor while helping authors understand how their work can become more legible and consequential, especially when arguments from the Global South encounter categories formed elsewhere.

My current doctoral supervision of Rae Francis Quilantang reinforces the importance of intellectual ownership and accountable mentoring. I support the development of questions, analytical claims, and responses to peer review. Good leadership makes routes into participation clearer while recognizing that capability is supported by time, feedback, tools, and relationships.

A staged institutional vision

I would begin institutional development with a bounded shared activity that meets a demonstrated need. Research training, data stewardship, and comparative inquiry can be developed through willing co-owners and viable resources. A standing lab or larger organization would follow only if colleagues, governance arrangements, and capacity support it.

• Opportunities should form pathways rather than isolated occasions.
• Methods training should cultivate judgment rather than procedural compliance.
• Internationalization should create reciprocal intellectual relationships rather than one-way movement toward dominant centers.
• Inclusion should preserve demanding standards while examining whether institutional arrangements unnecessarily restrict who can meet them.

Purpose and shared responsibilities

I want my leadership to leave behind more than completed tasks. It should produce relationships, practices, and structures through which scholars—particularly those working from historically under-resourced or epistemically marginal positions—can participate and flourish. Institution-building is a form of public scholarship because it shapes the conditions under which societies become able to know themselves.

Teaching, public service, and administration have legitimate purposes beyond my research program. I would learn existing practices, contribute dependably to curriculum and assessment work, and take part in deliberation about shared priorities. Research on institutions informs my questions; it does not substitute for administrative experience. My contribution should remain proportionate to documented responsibilities and the resources available.

Methods and collaboration → · Contact