Michael R. Dunford is a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He completed his PhD in Anthropology at the Australian National University (ANU) in July 2024. Prior to this, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at ANU’s Myanmar Research Centre. From 2017 to 2019, he served as a social science lecturer at the Parami Institute in Yangon, Myanmar.

He holds a Master’s degree in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (2016) and a Bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College.

Dunford’s research brings together theoretical perspectives from economic anthropology, science and technology studies, and interdisciplinary Southeast Asian area studies. His work explores the relationship between knowledge production and market formation, particularly how these processes intersect with ethno-racial differentiation and the reproduction of inequality.