Duncan McCargo is professor of Southeast Asian politics at the University of Leeds. He has a visiting affiliation at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, and is an associate fellow at New York’s Asia Society. McCargo is best known for his work on the politics of Thailand, on which he is one of the world’s leading scholars. McCargo’s research has covered electoral politics, the political role of the media, the military and politics, the career of Thaksin Shinawatra, and most recently the ongoing insurgency in Southern Thailand, where he done extensive fieldwork.
A regular visitor to Asia, he has also researched in Cambodia, Japan and Singapore, and has written on Indonesia and Vietnam. McCargo has published nine books, including The Thaksinization of Thailand (with Ukrist Pathmanand, NIAS 2005), and Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand (Cornell, 2008), which won the inaugural 2009 Bernard Schwartz book Prize from Asia Society.
McCargo often provides live commentary for the BBC and other leading broadcasters; while his op-ed and analysis pieces have appeared in the print editions of Time magazine, The Daily Telegraph, The Economist, The Guardian, The Independent, and more than a dozen other newspapers, in five different languages. He has authored studies of governance and human rights issues in Thailand and Cambodia for the Freedom House Countries at the Crossroads project.
A triple graduate of the University of London, McCargo holds a PhD in Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Thai studies by Mahasarakham University, Thailand, in 2010.