Dr. Vilashini Somiah is a feminist anthropologist and Senior Lecturer at the Gender Studies Programme at Universiti Malaya. She earned her Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore, an MA from Ohio University, an MRes from Universiti Malaya, and a BA from Universiti Malaya. Her research focuses on underrepresented narratives of women, migrants, and Borneans living in the interiors. She co-edited Revisiting Covid-19 in Malaysia: Plight and Perseverance (UM Press, 2023) and Sabah from the Ground: The 2020 Elections and the Politics of Survival (SIRD/ISEAS, 2021). Her first single-authored book, Irregular Migrants and the Sea at the Borders of Sabah, Malaysia: Pelagic Alliance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), won the Universiti Malaya Award for Outstanding Achievement (ACUM) for Best Social Science Book of 2022 and has received international acclaim and reviews. Dr Somiah is currently working on her fourth book which explores the lives and resilience of Bornean women. In 2024, Dr. Somiah was a Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and SEANNET. In 2025, she was appointed a Harvard Asia Centre Associate (2025-2026) https://asiacenter.harvard.edu/vilashini-somiah . That same year, she was elected to the Southeast Asia Council at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in the United States, a position she will hold until 2028 https://www.asianstudies.org/about/governance/councils/southeast-asia-council-seac/. Beyond academia, she writes ethnographic articles on Malaysia’s socio-political landscape. To learn more about her work, visit www.vilashinisomiah.com.
PROFILE
Address
Gender Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Office of The, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Website
umexpert.um.edu.my/vilasomiah
CONTACT
Telephone
60379675479
Email
vilasomiah
vila.somiah
RESEARCH ID
Orcid id
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6558-1331
Researcher id
GMW-4813-2022
Scopus id
57654659700