Dr Luthfi Adam's repository of research and thoughts.

About Me

I am a historian of Southeast Asia whose work brings together environmental history and the history of science, technology, and medicine. My research asks how nature is known, appropriated, worked, and made valuable, and how these processes reshape environments, labor, political authority, and social relations. Across my work, I am particularly interested in the movement and appropriation of knowledge, the exploitation and commodification of nature and local labor, and the ways Southeast Asian histories can contribute to larger debates in the environmental humanities and global history. My research interests include botany and empire, plant humanities, science and commodities, water and infrastructure, and herbal and popular medicine.

I am currently a Lecturer at the School of Government and Public Policy Indonesia and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Monash University Indonesia. I received my PhD in History from Northwestern University in 2020, where my dissertation won the Harold Perkin Prize for the best dissertation in the Department of History. From 2013 to 2020, I was an Arryman Scholar. I was also a Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University (2022–2023), a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Research at Monash University Indonesia (2023–2026), and a Visiting Researcher at Northwestern University’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs (2020–2022).