His research focuses on the transcultural ramifications of slave gathering warfare in mainland Southeast Asia, Northeast India and coastal Bengal, with a special focus on enslaved artisans, religious rituals, and processes of creolization and cultural exchange.
His research has received support from Fulbright-Hays (DDRA), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Watumull Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. He received the World History Association’s best dissertation award in 2014. His publication, “Southeast Asian Slavery and Slave-Gathering Warfare as a Vector for Cultural Transmission: The Case of Burma and Thailand,” also received awards from the American Historical Association and the Burma Studies Foundation for innovative research.
Beemer has a B.A. in politics from Brandeis University, and an M.A. in Southeast Asian studies and Ph.D. in history from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Before joining Duke Kunshan, he was the Mellon postdoctoral fellow in comparative world history at Colby College; an editor for TRaNS, a journal devoted to transnational research on Southeast Asia; and a 2017-18 SSRC Transregional Research Fellow for InterAsian Contexts and Connections.