Anne Booth graduated from Victoria University, Wellington, and then did graduate work at the Australian National University. She subsequenty taught at the University of Singapore for three years before returning to the ANU as a research fellow. In 1991, she accepted a chair at SOAS, University of London, and worked there until she retired in 2014. She was awarded a Lee Kong Chian fellowship in 2015/16, which allowed her to carry out research for this monograph at Stanford University and the National University of Singapore.