Project Director
Alexandra Denes is a Senior Research Associate at the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre where she is the Director of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and Museums Field School, the Culture and Rights Project, and the Visual Anthropology Program. An anthropologist specializing in heritage issues in Southeast Asia, Alexandra has spent over fifteen years living, working and researching in the region.
In 2002, Alexandra received a Fulbright scholarship to conduct field research on the revival of Khmer heritage and Khmer ethnic identity in Surin, Thailand. The research culminated in her doctoral dissertation, entitled “Recovering Khmer Ethnic Identity from the Thai National Past: An Ethnography of the Localism Movement in Thailand.” She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Cornell University in 2006.
Her current research interests center on cultural heritage rights at the Phnom Rung Historical Park in Buriram Province. She is broadly interested in issues of ethnic identity, ritual, memory, and the politics of cultural heritage revitalization within the context of nationalism.