International Institute for Asian Studies

17/06/2026

🔸Dr. Iqra Anugrah is an Affiliated Researcher at IIAS (2023-2026), he has recently published two new works:

-A journal article entitled "A Variated Convergence? Indonesian Progressives and Mass Politics in Contemporary Asian Perspective" published Open Access in Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research
➡️ https://alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/article/view/22581

-A new policy report entitled "The Price of Power: Campaign Finance and Vote Buying in Indonesia's 2024 Elections" co-authored by Ward Berenschot, Mada Sukmajati, and Vignesh Rajahmani. The report is published by KITLV, PolGov UGM, and LP3ES and available online in both English and Indonesian.
➡️https://www.kitlv.nl/news/report-the-price-of-power/

🔸More about Dr. Iqra Anugrah’s research at https://www.iias.asia/profile/iqra-anugrah



[image credit: journal cover]

16/06/2026

🔸Discover the latest IIAS Blog entries!

🔸IIAS releases new Blog articles on a weekly basis. Our blog series explores the rich and diverse world of Asian pop culture, history, and beyond. The latest entries for this month are:

-June 16: K-Slop: The Sugar-Coated, Shrink-Wrapped Version of Korean Culture
-June 9: When two worlds meet in the 미로 (Miro): K-pop Comes to South Africa

➡️Read these at: https://blog.iias.asia
➡️To contribute, visit https://blog.iias.asia/about

12/06/2026

🔸Dr. Aditya Kiran Kakati (IIAS Affiliated Fellow), has recently published an article entitled ‘Worlds of War: Zo Memorialisation of Global and ‘Total Wars’ in the Decolonising India–Burma (Myanmar) Borderlands’

🔸This piece is OpenAccess and appears in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.

➡️ For more information and to read the article, please visit: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2026.2677926

This article examines the selective and dissonant memorialisation of violent conflicts during the Second World War (WWII) and the early postcolonial era among Zo communities along the British India...

11/06/2026

🔸Laura Erber, IIAS Coordinator Global Partnerships and Fellowships, will be moderating a conversation about ‘Taiwanese Literature in a Global Context: Diaspora, Memory, and the Search for Identity’

🔸Join us for an inspiring literary and cultural event featuring award-winning authors Akira Higashiyama and Wu Ming-Yi in conversation on Taiwanese literature in a global context.

🔸Organised by Leiden University, the Leiden Asia Centre, and the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), this event is supported by the Spotlight Taiwan Project of Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. The event explores how literature travels across languages, borders, and cultures, and how stories shape our understanding of memory, migration, ecology, identity, and belonging in a global world.

🔸The programme will include authors’ reflections, a panel discussion, audience Q&A, and a reception.

⏰ 25 June 2026 | 16:30–19:30

📍 Sijthof Cultuur, Doezastraat 1-B, 2311 GZ Leiden

Everyone is welcome, admission is free

➡️Please register here: https://forms.gle/txtDbwCNADL1QyC67

10/06/2026

🔸 Dr. Amrita Gogol and Dr. Meera Venkatachalam (IIAS Research Fellows) will be participating in an upcoming webinar about "Discourses of Work across the Indian Ocean."

🔸 This event is hosted by the University of the Philippines Baguio, the Airlangga Institute for Indian Ocean Studies (AIIOC), and the International Consortium for Indian Ocean Studies (ICIOS).

⏰June 15, 2026 | 11:00 CEST

➡️ To learn more about the event and to register, please follow this link: https://indianoceanstudies.webnode.page/l/discourses-of-work-across-the-indian-ocean/

10/06/2026

🔹 Join us for our next guest lecture: ‘China in Cuban underground culture: artistic contagions, samizdat writing and unofficial poetry publications’

🔹 Some Cuban artistic initiatives were shaped in a very particular zone of autonomy on the borders of institutional life. Unpacking the signifier ‘China’ in these poetry publications and performances, aspects of the Cuban revolutionary past and present are revealed. Cuban artist Martha Luisa Hernández Cadenas will be present at the talk.

🔹 Nanne Timmer is an Associate Professor at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). As a Senior Lecturer in Latin American and Caribbean culture, her research is concerned with interculturality, translation, and the politics of the arts.

⚠️ This is an in-person event only. Everyone is welcome to join this lecture in the IIAS Conference room. Please register using the web form on this page.

⏰ June 23 | 14:30 ~ 16:00

📍 IIAS Conference Room, Herta Mohr Building room 0.28 2311 BG Leiden, Netherlands

➡️ For more information about the event registration, participants, please visit: https://www.iias.asia/events/china-cuban-underground-culture-artistic-contagions-samizdat-writing-and-unofficial-poetry



[Exhibition of Ediciones* by Yornel Martínez in the printing press Kwong Wah Po in Havana (photo: Alain Cabrera)

09/06/2026

🔹 Dr. Lisa Richaud (IIAS Research Fellow, 2022-2023) is in the process of releasing her book: ‘Casual Assemblies: Afterlives of Maoist Performance Culture in Beijing’s Public Parks’.

🔹 An online PDF version is currently available on OpenAccess: https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/books/oa-mono/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.4324/9781003690566&type=webpdf

🔹 For more information, read the synopsis at: https://www.routledge.com/Casual-Assemblies-Afterlives-of-Maoist-Performance-Culture-in-Beijings-Public-Parks/Richaud/p/book/9789463725392

🔹 Dr. Lisa Richaud is currently Research Fellow at the Paris Institute for
Advanced Study and will join KU Leuven as Assistant Professor in
Anthropology. Her latest articles can be found in Ethos and HAU: Journal
of Ethnographic Theory, where she edited a special section on the politics
of negative affects in post-Reform China. She is also a former fellow of
the International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) and the Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research.

🔹 This project is a publication by Taylor & Francis /Routledge, previously Amsterdam University Press

09/06/2026

🔸Assoc. Prof. Dr. Najmah (2025-2026 IIAS Research Fellow) will be giving a lecture at her host institution at Kasetsart University.

🔸“Mothers Navigating Life in Coal-Mining Villages in South Sumatra, Indonesia” will be moderated by Asst. Prof. Dr. Korakit Choomkran, Vice Dean for International Affairs, Faculty of Social Sciences.

📅 Date: 10 June 2026

⏰ Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM (Thailand Time)

📍You can join that lecture Live on Facebook at : https://www.facebook.com/kusocialsciences

09/06/2026

🔸 Thank you to everyone who joined Dr. Vivien Chan's talk at the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) yesterday!

🔸Dr. Chan will be a visiting fellow at IFP until returning to IIAS to complete the Asia in the World Fellowship Programme

🔸To find out more about this fellowship and other opportunities, please visit https://www.iias.asia/fellowships/asia-in-the-world

05/06/2026

🔸 Last month, LeidenGlobal hosted a public lecture in the beautiful Tempelzaal of the Antiquities Museum (Leiden). Two researchers, including Dr Aarti Kawlra, from IIAS’s Humanities Across Borders project, introduced the context of a chosen topic which was then followed by an interactive exchange of ideas and an open Q&A with the audience.

🔸Thank you to LeidenGlobal for this initiative and to The Rijksumseum van Oudheden for hosting. We look forward to participating in future events!

🔸More about this event at: https://www.leidenglobal.org/highlight/leidenglobal-dialogues-indigo-threads-of-trade-culture-change



[photos courtesy of Enrico Joaquin Lapuz]