Join NYSEAN, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the Columbia-Harvard China and the World program for a conference featuring Walden Bello, Pongphisoot Busbarat, Thomas Christensen, Sophal Ear, Joseph Chinyong Liow, Derek Mitchell, Ann Marie Murphy, Hong Hai Nguyen, Lien-Hang Nguyen, Elina Noor, Praslhant Parameswaran, Gregory Poling, Yohanes Sulaiman, and Ayumi Teraoka. These leading experts will examine the implications of a second Trump administration for US-Southeast Asian relations at this critical junction in global politics.

Join Thirdworld Newsreel and the Documentary Forum at City College of New York for an Indie-Lens Pop-Up screening and discussion of the documentary film Home Court, directed by Erica Tanamachi, ahead of its airdate (March 24, 2025) on PBS. The director will be joined by the producers of the film, Jenn Lee Smith and Brandon Soun. Home Court is the coming-of-age story of Ashley Chea, a Cambodian American basketball prodigy in Southern California whose life intensifies as recruitment heats up. As she overcomes injury as well as racial and class differences between her home and private school worlds and against rival schools, Ashley strives to become her own person and leave a legacy behind.

Join NYSEAN for a book talk by Merlyna Lim, Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, and Director of the ALiGN Media Lab at Carleton University. Social Media and Politics in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2025) highlights the dual role of social media in both fostering grassroots activism and enabling autocratic practices of algorithmic politics, notably in electoral politics.

The Center for Khmer Studies (CKS) and NYSEAN invite you to a panel discussion on the book Cambodia’s Trials: Contrasting Visions of Truth, Transitional Justice and National Recovery (University of Chicago Press, 2024), which examines Cambodia’s journey of justice and recovery more than 40 years after the Khmer Rouge genocide. The panel features the book’s editors and contributors: Robin Biddulph, Alexandra Kent, Courtney Work, Pádraig McAuliffe, and Eve Zucker, CKS President and NYSEAN Executive Board Member, who will also serve as the session’s moderator.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at University of Hawaii-Manoa for a panel featuring Thanet Aphornsuvan, Parker Novak, Sam Seun, and Dominggus Elcid Li. Moderated by Meredith Weiss, this webinar will discuss key issues related to recent and forthcoming elections in Southeast Asia.

Join the Center for Khmer Studies for a workshop by Sivpheng Haing, a Lecturer in the Educational Studies Department of the Faculty of Education at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). This workshop offers instruction on the basics of academic writing to Cambodian students and researchers.

Join the Columbia Society of International Law and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University for a film screening of Daze of Justice: A Documentary Film by Michael Siv in collaboration with Dr. Leakhena Nou, medical sociologist and Professor of Sociology at California State University-Long Beach. This documentary follows Dr. Nou’s research on Cambodian American women and their journeys to resurrect the memory of their loved ones before the UN Special Tribunal prosecuting the Khmer Rouge.

Join the Columbia Society of International Law and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University for a talk by Dr. Leakhena Nou, medical sociologist and Professor of Sociology at California State University-Long Beach, who will share her approach to empowering Khmer Rouge survivors to share their testimonies at the UN-supported Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Hosted by Asia Society, Phloeun Prim, Executive Director of Cambodian Living Arts and New York City-based Cambodian poet Sokunthary Svay will join Elena Park, Joe Melillo, and Karen Brooks Hopkins to reflect on how Cambodia’s the cultural landscape has been transformed in the years following the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The Roosevelt House Human Rights Program will screen the film Ghost Mountain, which tells the story of a Cambodian refugee who made his way to Connecticut in 1980 after surviving the Killing Fields. This event is sponsored by Network 20/20, the Hunter College Asian American Studies Program and the History Department.

Hosted by the NYU Center for Media, Culture, and History, author Deirdre Boyle and scholar/filmmaker Jill Godmilow will discuss the book, Ferryman of Memories: The Films of Rithy Panh, which follows the story of award-winning filmmaker Rithy Panh, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide who moved to France.

Hosted by the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, Trent Walker, author of Until Nirvana’s Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia, will discuss the aesthetic and affective dimensions of the four primary types of sung Buddhist poems in Cambodia: retellings of the Buddha's life, expressions of filial gratitude, meditations on the process of dying, and aspirations for future bliss.

Hosted by the Center for Khmer Studies, Samedy Suong, CKS Deputy Director, will introduce CKS programs and other CKS-related activities. CKS Head Librarian, Sivleng Chhor, will discuss what is available and how to access CKS library collections. Eve Zucker, CKS President and WEAI Adjunct Research Scholar, will introduce the speakers.

Hosted by the Center for Khmer Studies, Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam, a medical anthropologist and ethnobotanist, will explore the different relationalities and rationalities expressed by groups living in Siem Reap Province for treating COVID-19 symptoms with either biomedicine, traditional, and/or folk medicine.

Sopheak Chhan, Royal University of Phnom Penh, will consider how the impacts of hydropower dams across the Mekong River have intensified long-term land and resource struggles in Cambodia. This event is sponsored by the UHM Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the East-West Center.

Randle DeFalco, University of Hawaii at Manoa, will provide an overview of the work of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) also known as the “Khmer Rouge Tribunal.” This event is sponsored by the UHM Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the William S. Richardson School of Law Pacific/Asian Legal Studies.

Hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University, Jeremy Ladd, Cornell University, will discuss the role repression of opposition parties plays in increasing support for the opposition party in hybrid regimes using the Cambodia National Rescue Party as a case study.

Dr. Carl Grundy-Warr, National University of Singapore, Dr. Walker DePuy, Cornell University, Armand Camhol, Chengchi University, and Ek Sovanna, Kratie Representative of the Prey Lang Community Network in Cambodia, will discuss the role of local communities in the development paradigm. This event is hosted by the University of Hawaii Center for Southeast Asia Studies.

Dr. Ian G. Baird, University of Wisconsin-Madison, will discuss how upstream hydropower dams in China and Laos are destroying the Ramsar wetland in Cambodia. This event is hosted by the Center for Khmer Studies and will be moderated by NYSEAN Executive Committee member, Eve Zucker.

Hosted by the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association, Sokunthary Svay, a Khmer writer from the Bronx, will lead a writing workshop on how to find one’s voice and engage readers.

Hosted by University of California Los Angeles, Piphal Heng, Postdoctoral Scholar at the Cotsen Institute and the Program for Early Modern Southeast Asia (PEMSEA), will introduce the ancient metropolis of Angkor and its Khmer world through recent archaeological findings using historical sources, excavation and remotely sensed ground survey (LIDAR) data.

Hosted by The Center for Khmer Studies, Dr. Francesca Billeri, University of Rome, will discuss how Phleng kar wedding music and lakhon bassac theatre genres are being mediated through television performances and remediated on the internet.

Join Mekong NYC, the Ford Foundation, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and NYSEAN for a double-feature screening of Cambodia's pre-war films Mother’s Heart by Yvon Hem and Thavary Meas Bong by Uong Citta. This will be followed by the NYC book launch of Faded Reels: The Art of Four Cambodian Filmmakers 1960-1975 and a Q&A with author Dr. LinDa Saphan and Cambodian film collector Nate Hun. The discussion will be moderated by Sreyneath Poole.

Soksamphoas Im will explore the Cambodian government’s approach to maintaining peace and stability in Cambodia through an examination of the Cambodian National Ageing Policy (NAP) 2017-2030. This event is hosted by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan.

This presentation will explain the context and content of iconographic archives documenting the history of Cambodian court dance. The presentation will be given by the Center for Khmer Studies’s (CKS )French Research Fellow Dr. Lucie Labbé, and will be moderated by Ms. Samedy Suong, CKS Deputy Director.

Hosted by the Center for Khmer Studies, this webinar will discuss how to design sustainable cities, how environments shape certain behaviors, and how environmentally-friendly behaviors can be supported in Phnom Penh.

Join Dr. Theresa de Langis, American University of Phnom Penh, and Ms. Sotheary Yim, a psychologist who worked with survivors of gender-based violence from the Khmer Rouge period, for a discussion on the efforts to have forced marriage investigated as a crime as part of the prosecutorial strategy of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. This event is moderated by Eve Zucker and sponsored by the Center for Khmer Studies, NIAS Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and NYSEAN.

Join Dr. Eng Netra , Cambodia Development Resource Institute, and Dr. Nhim Tum, Center for Natural Resources and Environment, for a seminar on collaborative research development in Cambodia. This event is chaired by Professor Shin Hyun Bang and hosted by the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and the Cambodia Development Resource Institute.

Hosted by Cornell University, Dr. Ashish Bajracharya, the Deputy Director for International Programs at the Population Council, will discuss the health and wellbeing of women working in the garment sectors of Cambodia and Bangladesh.