• Dean of Asian Studies, ANU 1996-2005); 
• Basham Professor of Asian History, ANU 1994-2013. 
• Previously Lecturer and Head of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Kent; 
• and Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader at ANU. 
• Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1989-1990; 
• Director, Australia Asia Perceptions Project, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, 1991-1994; 
• Raffles Visiting Professor, National University of Singapore, 2002; 
• Visiting Professor, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2006-2007; 
• Visiting Professor, Humboldt University, 2006-2007; 
• Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne, 2008- ; 
• International Director, Asialink, 2009- ; 
• Pok Rafeah Chair, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2010-2011; 
• Visiting Fellow, Kyoto University, 2011;  
• Tun Hussein Onn Chair in International Studies, Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia, 2014-2015; 
• Visiting Professor, Centre for ASEAN Regionalism, University of Malaya, 2016- 

Author:

• Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (1982, 2016); 
• (co-editor) Southeast Asia from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries (1986, 1990); 
• (co-editor), Recovering the Orient; Artists, Scholars, Appropriations, (1994); 
• (co-editor)  Southeast Asian Languages and Literatures (1988, 1999); 
• The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya (1994, 2002);
• The Malays (2008, 2011, 2019, 2021); 
• (co-author) Transforming Malaysia: Dominant and Competing Paradigms (2014); 
• (co-editor) Malaysian Perspectives on ASEAN Regionalism (2019); 
• (co-editor) Asia and Europe in the 21st century: new anxieties, new opportunities (2021)