writing
As a writer, I bring together anthropology, creative experimentation, and critical inquiry to craft narratives that engage and resonate with diverse audiences. I thrive on breaking down complex ideas into digestible insights and enjoy tailoring content to connect meaningfully with specific and diverse audiences. My storytelling is immersive, engaging, and designed to leave a lasting impact.
Writing Approach
With over two decades of experience blending storytelling with cultural insight, I create deeply informed, human-centered content across a range of formats—academic publications, consultancy deliverables, public speaking scripts, joyful blogging, along with writing (and writing block!) workshops.
My focus is on making complex ideas accessible and actionable. Whether developing evocative copy, curating nuanced perspectives, or producing sensory-driven narratives, I approach each project with creativity and collaboration, bridging stories with social and cultural action.
Academic Fuel
My academic writing is embedded in two decades of ethnographic work with Cham Muslims in Cambodia and uses imagery and poetics as a feminist and experimental intervention to convey disrupted histories
You can read more about my current non-fiction book project For This Cannot Be Written Or Seen: Cham Resonances Countering Regimes of Hypervisibility here and read through some of my publications below.
Writing (and drawing!) Workshops
I design and facilitate writing workshops that combine cultural insight, creative storytelling, and audience-focused strategies, empowering participants to craft compelling narratives that are both impactful and deeply informed.
For the past decade, I have taught experiential and ethnographic writing to college students in North America, Southeast Asia and SWANA.
Ask me about my “Unlocking the writing block through drawing” workshop for your team!
Let’s collaborate
I am currently welcoming opportunities in travel writing, digital nomadism, inclusive speechwriting, and beyond—always seeking projects that inspire and challenge.
Get in touch today to explore potential collaboration.
how i do it: publications sample
READING ROOM
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Current | The Sketchy Anthropologist | A sketchy newsletter about all things anthropology, all things sketchnotes, and the nerdy corner that connects them both
2023 | An Oral History of Photography During and After the Cambodian Civil War (as @m.for.film), casualphotophile.com, a website for people who love cameras and photography
2021 | Ethnographica Obscura: An Interview with Alexander L. Fattal, Society for Cultural Anthropology’s Visual & New Media Section.
2017 | Was the Kahin Center Home to a Cinema Hub?, Cornell SEAP Bulletin, Spring 2017, 20-23.
2013-2016 | chamattic.com | (Visual ) Anthropology & “Chameries” dusting off the old & the new [blog closed].
2008-2009 | Clichés Chams, column writer & photographer, Ka-Set e-magazine (Khmer, English, French) [website closed].
2006-2007 | dufinfonddugrenier.com| blog: ethnography & the archive, Islam in Cambodia [blog closed].
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2022 | Yours, Im-Precisely, Otherwise Mag, Vice-Versa issue
2019 | Archiving the Difficult to Picture, Southeast Of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, 3(2), National University of Singapore, Singapore, 131-148.
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Ongoing Book Project | For This Cannot Be Told, Written Or Seen:
Cham Resonances Countering Regimes of HypervisibilityThis book is an in-depth ethnography with Chams—Muslims in vastly Buddhist Cambodia—and among them Saeths—or Sayyids, descendants of the Prophet’s family
It is the result of fieldwork conducted as a community historian and wedding videographer primarily in Cambodia and secondarily in Iran, over the past two decades.
My research methods combine multilingual interviews, vernacular archives, deep immersion, multimodal practices and sources, and poetic musings.
For This Cannot Be’s ultimate intervention is a call for alternative academic writing to move from the deep documentation of humans to profound openings with humanity.
Articles & Books Chapters
2023 | Of Manuscripts That Can’t Be Read and Roads That Can’t Be Seen: Historical Matters among Chams in Cambodia, The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion, P. Tamimi Arab & S. B. Rodriguez-Plate eds., Routledge.
2020 | ‘For ‘Ali Is Our Ancestor’: Cham Sayyids’ Shi’a Trajectories from Cambodia to Iran, in Shi’a Minorities in the Contemporary World: Migration, Transnationalism and Multilocality, O. Scharbrodt & Y. Shanneik, eds., Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 227-256.
2016 | Two Rituals, a Bit of Dualism and Possibly Some Inseparability: ‘And so that’s how we say that Chams and Khmers are one and the same’,Sojourn Journal, ISEAS – Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.