Julia Merican is a senior research executive at the Institute of Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS). She is also a writer, dipping her pen—or, more accurately, tapping her keys—into subjects that range from the complex nature of domestic servitude in contemporary South Asian literature to the exclusionary politics of cosmopolitanism and commodified country living. More of her work can be viewed at juliamerican.carrd.co. She holds a Master of Studies in post-1900 English literature from the University of Oxford, where she was a Merdeka scholar.