Upcoming Events
Democracy for Sale: Elections, Clientelism, and the State in Indonesia
Fifth Annual Thailand Update 2019: Making Sense of the Elections
Art in Contested Political and Cultural Terrains, Asia
Film Screening: Journey from the Fall (Viet. Vượt Sóng) with film director Ham Tran
DEADLINE EXTENSION: Junior Resident Fellows Program in Siem Reap, Cambodia
DEADLINE EXTENSION: Khmer Language and Culture Study Program Summer, Cambodia
DEADLINE EXTENSION: CKS Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship 2019
Call for Submissions: 2019 Conference of the Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies
Call for Proposals: Of Peninsula and Archipelago, The Landscape of Translation in Southeast Asia
Call for Applications: SEASSI Intensive Language Training Program 2019
Vietnam’s Relations with China: Domestic impact and international implications
Call for abstracts - The 1st Asia Regional Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy
Call for Papers: Disinformation and Elections In East And Southeast Asia: Digital Futures And Fragile Democracies
The Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture: "Out of Place: Refugees, Immigrants, and Storytelling" with author Viet Thanh Nguyen
Infrastructure as Asset or Public Good: Who Gives a Dam? Financing Development and Development Finance Along the Mekong and Ayeyarwaddy
Run to the Hills: Mainland Southeast Asia's Integration into Global Opium Markets (1940-1998)
The Justice Facade: Genocide, International Justice, and Human Rights in Cambodia
Job Vacancy: Instructor for Junior Resident Fellows Program in Cambodia
Call for Papers: Monash Herb Feith Centre Conference 2019: ‘Chinese Indonesians: Identities and Histories'
Call for Papers: Islam and Capitalism in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia
New & Noteworthy
The FRONTLINE DispatchBlood and Power in the Philippines
Blood and Power in the Philippines
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte makes his own rules. His war on drugs has led to the deaths of thousands of alleged drug users and dealers. His violent rhetoric and rape jokes have shocked people around the world. Yet he’s hugely popular. Reporter Aurora Almendral delves into what made him the leader he is today. Her investigation starts in his hometown in the Philippines. The FRONTLINE Dispatch reports.
Columbia Journalism ReviewHow one election meant sweeping press freedoms in Malaysia
How one election meant sweeping press freedoms in Malaysia
Before 2018, journalism in Malaysia was a risky profession. But last year an election abruptly shifted the atmosphere, and brought unexpected freedoms, especially for the media. Nithin Coca writes for Columbia Journalism Review.
Lost World
A young Cambodian islander, Phalla Vy, has dedicated herself to monitoring and speaking out against the sand dredging. Kalyanee Mam’s exquisite short documentary, Lost World, co-produced by Emergence Magazine and Go Project Films, evokes the pain of losing one’s land—and way of life—through Vy’s eyes.
Council on Foreign RelationsThailand’s Election: What to Know
Thailand’s Election: What to Know
Thailand will go through the motions of free elections in March, but the likely result will be entrenched authoritarian rule and further instability. Joshua Kurlantzick writes for the Council on Foreign Relations.
JASSBetween a Rock and a Hard Place: Women, Power, and Change in Southeast Asia
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Women, Power, and Change in Southeast Asia
A vital part of this report about the current context in Southeast Asia involves showing the ways that ordinary people, activists, human rights defenders, and social movements are organizing to protect their communities from destruction and injustice, even in extremely precarious and dangerous situations. Some of the most vocal and active participants in progressive movements for change and transformation are women from the most affected communities in the region.
The Interpreter Letter from Dili: languid days, broken barracks, and a surprise
Letter from Dili: languid days, broken barracks, and a surprise
There has always been something of a ghost-like quality to languorous Dili, capital of Timor-Leste with its Portuguese-era buildings and statues from Indonesian times still standing.
Nowadays, it feels that there are new ghosts in the city: imprints of a once prominent international presence slipping from perceptible view. Between 1999-2012, the country was home to military peacekeepers, police from more than 50 nations, a legion of non-governmental organisations, an alphabet soup of programs, and enough characters to fill a shelf of Graham Greene novels.
National Public RadioAn Island Crusader Takes On The Big Brands Behind Plastic Waste
An Island Crusader Takes On The Big Brands Behind Plastic Waste
Plastic is to our time what wood was for millennia. But unlike wood, most plastic doesn't go away. It ends up as trash in streets, rivers, lakes and oceans. It breaks down into microplastic — particles a tenth of an inch or smaller — and gets into our food and water. The health effects are largely unknown.
What's the alternative? Is it feasible to persuade the wealthiest, most profitable corporations in the world to completely change the way they make plastic and package consumer goods?
The AtlanticCambodian Deportees Return to a 'Home' They've Never Known
Cambodian Deportees Return to a 'Home' They've Never Known
America is deporting Cambodian refugees convicted of crimes. Did the U.S. have a responsibility to help them when they first arrived as refugees? Charles Dunst writes for The Atlantic.
Council on Foreign RelationsSoutheast Asia Recap 2018: Democracy Continues to Suffer
Southeast Asia Recap 2018: Democracy Continues to Suffer
Council on Foreign Relation's Joshua Kurlantzick writes that democracy continued to suffer in Southeast Asia in 2018.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Philippine Politics Under Duterte: A Midterm Assessment
Philippine Politics Under Duterte: A Midterm Assessment
More than two years into Rodrigo Duterte's presidency, the record is mixed with change, continuity, and regression. This should prompt more robust U.S. support for democracy in the Philippines. David G. Timberman writes for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Council on Foreign RelationsCan Hun Sen Pass Power to His Children?
Can Hun Sen Pass Power to His Children?
Cambodia became a one-party state in late July, with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) taking 125 of the available 125 National Assembly seats in an election devoid of legitimate opposition, as the CPP-controlled Supreme Court had dissolved the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), the main opposition, in November 2017.
Dark LensDark Lens / Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino Camera in Duterte’s Republic
Dark Lens / Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino Camera in Duterte’s Republic
As an act of remembering the dead and this era of extrajudicial killings, killings that President Duterte refers to as “his only crime,” we turn to the camera as a way of capturing Filipino life under this regime. #DarkLensProject #LenteNgKarimlan is a digital art project, an online exhibition of Filipino photographs on the work of death.
Putting Rohingya Voices Back into the Rohingya Crisis
In the wake of the ethnic cleansing of more than 700,000 Rohingya from Myanmar, various debates have erupted: What do the Rohingya want (their own state, a safe return to Burma, relocation)? And who are they (an indigenous ethnic group, “Bengali" interlopers masquerading as Burmese autochthons, a religious minority)? Based on on-going research in refugee camps in Cox Bazaar and with members of the Rohingya diaspora, Dr.
Our Land is the Sea
As plant and animal diversity rapidly disappear, human cultures—and the long-cultivated knowledge they sustain—are disappearing too. Our Land is the Sea explores how these parallel trends are related through the diverse perspectives of members of a Bajau community grappling with coral reef extinction, economic change, ethnic discrimination, and changing practices of Islam in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Read more here.
South China Morning PostWas Cambodia’s US$300 million Khmer Rouge tribunal worth it?
Was Cambodia’s US$300 million Khmer Rouge tribunal worth it?
After spending nine years and more than US$300 million to prosecute the leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million of their countrymen, a United Nations-assisted tribunal has ended up convicting only three people for the communist group’s heinous actions.
Was it worth it?
The Massacres of 1965-66 in Indonesia: The Question of Responsibility
Watch Dr. John Roosa (UBC) and Dr. Geoffrey Robinson (UCLA) answer questions from the audience regarding the massacres that took place in Indonesia between 1965 and 1966.
