Pujo Semedi obtained his PhD in Anthropology from Amsterdam University for his research on the social dynamics of a fishing community on the north coast of Java in relation to the fishers' position as marginalized subjects of colonial and post-colonial state (1820s-1990s). In 1992 he accepted a junior teaching position at the Dept. of Anthropology, Universitas Gadjah Mada, where he now works as a Professor in Rural Anthropology.

Pujo Semedi's research focuses on environmental and political-economic issues of rural agrarian communities in Indonesia as they are exposed to the expansion of capitalism in the last two centuries. Most of Pujo Semedi's research is carried out under the umbrella of international collaboration and serves both as field training for global students and senior research program as well. Pujo Semedi observed the consequences of capitalism in rural life and forms of accommodations taken by villagers as they are exposed to alien political-economic forces that offered them opportunities to taste the prosperity of modern life as well as put them in competitive market relations that destroy their traditional social fabric and potentially can turn them into proletariat.  Since 2017 Pujo Semedi has been collecting data in Upper Rhein, Southern Germany to study the dynamics of rural life in the land where capitalism is not an alien force. His research results are published as articles, book chapters, and books in leading national and international journals and publishers. 

• 2024 Eight arguments why biodiversity is important to safeguard food security. in Plants, People, Planet. with Dannenberg, P., Braun, B., Greiner, C., Follmann, A., Haug, M., Semedi, P., Kopriva, S. doi:10.1002/ppp3.10492
• 2023 Two Centuries of Agrarian, Economic, and Ecological Shifts in the North Coast of Java (1812–2012). with Mizuno, Kosuke & Nooteboom, Gerben. (Eds.). (2023). Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada Press.
• 2023 "Riding a Carousel Horse. REDD+ in West Kalimantan". Co-authorized with Carolina Astri. In M. Lücking, A. Meiser, & I. Rohrer (Eds.), In Tandem – Pathways towards a Postcolonial Anthropology. Im Tandem – Wege zu einer postkolonialen Ethnologie. Wiesbaden: Springer.
• 2022 Hidup Bersama Raksasa. Manusia dan Pendudukan Perkebunan Sawit. (Translator) Co-authorized with Tania Li. Jakarta: Marjin Kiri.
• 2022 Rubber, Oil Palm and Accumulation in West Kalimantan, 1910s-2010s. Paramita 2022 Vol. 32 Issue 1 Pages 33-44
• 2021 Plantation Life. Corporate Occupation in Indonesia’s Oil Palm Zones. Co-authorized with Tania Li. Durham: Duke University Press.