Aida Arosoaie

Aida Arosoaie is currently a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology at UW-Madison, pursuing a PhD Minor in Culture, History and the Environment within the Nelson Institute for the Environment. Aida’s key research interests are the interdependencies between religion, the economy and the environment in Indonesia. She seeks to understand the impact of the religious conversion of animist indigenous communities in Papua, Indonesia, on social relations of productions and the surrounding landscape. Aida holds a BA in Politics and Hindi from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a MSc in Strategic Studies from Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). Prior to joining UW-Madison, Aida spent four years as a research at NTU Singapore, working on religion and politics in Southeast Asia and conducting extensive fieldwork in Malaysia and Indonesia. The generous funding from the Scott Kloeck-Jenson Fellowship will enable Aida to spend the summer of 2019 doing pre-dissertation fieldwork in Indonesia, focusing on building relationships with proselytizing groups, as well as with governmental and non-governmental actors.