Simon Rowedder is a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior to this, he was Assistant Professor of Development Politics at the University of Passau in Germany. He also previously served as a Research Fellow at the same department at NUS, where he completed his PhD in Southeast Asian Studies in 2018. He continues to be affiliated with the NUS–Max Weber Foundation Research Group on Borders, Mobilities and New Infrastructures.

His research interests span economic anthropology, border studies, and development studies, with a regional focus on the Sino–Southeast Asian borderlands—particularly Yunnan, Laos, and Thailand. His first monograph, Cross-Border Traders in Northern Laos: Mastering Smallness, was published by Amsterdam University Press in July 2022. He is also the co-editor, with Oliver Tappe, of Extracting Development: Contested Resource Frontiers in Mainland Southeast Asia, published by the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in late 2022.