Originally from Canada, Dr Elspeth Thomson has lived in Singapore since 2000. She is a Senior Fellow at the Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS). She received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research interests span Asian energy security, Asian energy economics and energy and the environment. Besides her book tracing the history of China's coal industry and several edited collections, she has published numerous articles and book chapters on many aspects of the various types of energy consumed and traded in Southeast, North and South Asia. Through the 1990s, she taught at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and Lingnan University in Hong Kong. From 2001-2007, she was a Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute in NUS where she was a China energy specialist.