Matthew Isaac Cohen is a scholar of Indonesian performing arts and puppet theatres around the world. His research examines tradition in modernity, the emergence of new artistic forms and practices in culturally complex sites, representations of alterity and transnational performances.

An American by birth, he studied wayang kulit in the puppetry department of the conservatoire Institut Seni Indonesia Surakarta in Indonesia, received a PhD in anthropology from Yale University, was a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in The Netherlands and taught at the University of Glasgow before joining Royal Holloway in 2005. He has been a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Malaya in Malaysia and a visiting scholar at Sanata Dharma University in Indonesia. In the academic year 2011-12 he is a fellow-in-residence at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, working on a history of theatre and performance in modern Indonesia.

Professor Cohen has published two monographs, The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891-1903 (2006; winner of the Harry J. Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies from the Association for Asian Studies in 2008) and Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905-1952 (2010); edited two volumes of plays in translation, Demon Abduction: A Wayang Ritual Drama from West Java (1998) and The Lontar Anthology of Indonesian Drama, Volume 1: Plays for the Popular Stage (2010); and written numerous articles, essays and translations. His research has been supported by grants from the Fulbright, the American Council of Learned Societies, the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

He performs wayang kulit internationally under the company banner Kanda Buwana, and in 2009, he was honoured to receive the royal title Kyai Ngabehi from the royal court of Kacirebonan (Cirebon, Indonesia) for ‘great and consistent attention to the culture of Indonesia, particularly in the field of traditional puppetry.’

He is a research committee member of ASEASUK, the national subject group on South-East Asian Studies, a contributing editor to Asian Theatre Journal and Britain’s national puppetry magazine, Animations Online, and sits on the Publications and Research Commissions of UNIMA, the international puppetry organization affiliated with UNESCO. A frequent observer of puppet theatre in London, he reviews puppet plays for Animations Online and has organized workshops, lectures and seminars on puppetry at Royal Holloway and the Puppet Centre Trust. He is also one ofthe founders and co-organisers of the Asian Performing Arts Forum,a London-based strategic partnership bringing together academics, artists and community members to discuss current issues and research into Asian theatre, dance and music. 

Professor Cohen welcomes applications from research students, particularly in the following areas: Southeast Asian theatre and performance; puppet theatre; traditional theatre and folk drama; and anthropology of theatre.