Theara Thun is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS), Kyoto University, Japan. Before joining CSEAS, he was a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden, the Netherlands. He received a PhD in History at the National University of Singapore under a joint doctoral scholarship program between the National University of Singapore and the Harvard-Yenching Institute (Cambridge, MA, USA). His research interests include the relationship between local texts and figures and the construction of collective identity and religion from the pre-colonial to post-independence periods of Cambodia and Southeast Asia.