My research interests include pandemics, behavior and policy relating to addictive substances, the intersection of demography, economics, health, and history in Asia, and applications of portfolio theory to fields outside finance, for which the theory was originally developed. Geographic focus areas of my research include Indonesia and South Asia.

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Listen to "The 1918 Spanish Flu: The mother of all pandemics" and "Pandemic: The Story of the 1918 Flu" on BBC World referring to my research on the 1918 pandemic in India and Indonesia. Read Laura Spinney's "How the Spanish flu of 1918 changed India" in The Caravan magazine and "The Virus that Killed 18 Million Indians" referring to this research. View a map showing the progress of the influenza pandemic of 1918-19 across British India here and interviews with NDTV and India Today TV on the 1918 influenza pandemic and its lessons for the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

View infographics and brief descriptions of my work on the Indonesian killings of 1965-66 at the Inside Indonesia and New Mandala websites (English) and the YPKP65 website (Bahasa Indonesia). Read a translation of my work on the Indonesian killings of 1965-66 in East Java here. View short videos (Bahasa Indonesia) describing this research on Narasi TV here and here and a broader account of the context here.

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Watch a presentation of my research on using drug price data to detect flows of illegal drugs here or listen to interviews about this research on public radio here (for cocaine) and here (for MDMA or 'ecstasy').

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I have received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for my research, which has appeared or will appear in a variety of journals including American Psychologist, American Journal of Public Health, Emerging Infectious Diseases, American Journal of Epidemiology, Demography, Population Studies, Demographic Research, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Nicotine and Tobacco Research, Tobacco Control, Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, the International Journal of Drug Policy, IISE Transactions, the Journal of Research in Personality, the Journal of Regional Science, Land Economics, the Journal of Economic History, Explorations in Economic History, World Politics, The British Journal of Political Science, and The Journal of Asian Studies.