After completing his BA in German Studies at Brown University, he spent several years in China working as a teacher, translator and interpreter. In 2008, he entered the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University, which awarded him an MA in 2011 and a PhD in 2016. Dr Howlett has received a variety of academic honours, including a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and a Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship. He joins Yale-NUS College from the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, where he was an Academy Scholar during the 2016-17 academic year.