Dr. Deasy Simandjuntak is a political anthropologist and Associate Fellow at the ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute (ISEAS), Singapore, Singapore. A recipient of the Taiwan Fellowship, Deasy is Visiting Associate Fellow at the Center for Asia Pacific Area Studies (CAPAS), Academia Sinica. Her main interests are Southeast Asian democracy, Indonesian politics, and decentralization. She completed her PhD in 2010 at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Deasy regularly publishes commentaries and policy articles on Southeast Asian democracy and Indonesian politics and is invited to give comments on the above topics in the mass media. She is co-editor of the book Aspirations with Limitations: Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs under Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (ISEAS Publishing, 2018). Her most recent publication is "Disciplining the Accepted and Amputating the Deviants: Segregated Religious Citizenship in Indonesia," in Asian Journal of Law and Society, Cambridge University Press, 2021.