New York Southeast Asia Network

10/11/2026

Association for Asian Studies, Inc. (AAS) Librarian Travel Grant – The Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA)

Deadline: January 28, 2027

The Committee on Research Materials on Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA) is pleased to announce the creation of a new travel grant for early career and aspiring librarians working in Southeast Asian Studies. CORMOSEA has available a total of $1,000 for those based in Southeast Asia or $750 for those based anywhere else to help defray the travel costs to the AAS Annual Conference 2027 in Boston, Massachusetts. These funds will be disbursed as a single award for a librarian, library support worker, or library student based anywhere in the world.

Practitioners from all levels of librarianship can apply, including graduate students, paraprofessionals, and faculty librarians. Neither a library degree, nor an advanced degree in Southeast Asia Studies is required, though applicants must demonstrate engagement with both of these fields in their application materials. We strongly encourage scholars from countries with lower-than-average per capita income to apply. Please be aware that CORMOSEA travel funds cannot go to those who receive the $2000 AAS International Exchange Travel Grant, and that receipt of the CORMOSEA grant will not permit graduate students to receive the $200 AAS student travel stipend.

To apply, please fill out the form below by Friday, January 8, 2027, 11:59pm Eastern Time. If you have any questions, please forward them to Ryan Wolfson-Ford at [email protected] and Emily Zinger at [email protected].

https://www.nysean.org/blog/cormosea-travel-awards

10/11/2026

Southeast Asia Between China, the United States, and a Changing Global Order | Asia Society Policy Institute

Date: October 14, 2026 | 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM ET

Type/Location: In Person / New York, NY

Join the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) for a panel exploring how Southeast Asia can navigate intensifying U.S.–China competition while advancing its own economic and strategic priorities. Speakers include Gita Wirjawan, former Indonesian Minister of Trade and Honorary Senior Fellow at the Center for China Analysis (CCA), and Amb. Craig Allen, former U.S. Ambassador to Brunei Darussalam and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at CCA. Kevin Zongzhe Li, Fellow at CCA, will moderate the discussion.

https://www.nysean.org/events/southeast-asia-between-china-the-united-states-and-a-changing-global-order

10/10/2026

Performing Vulnerability: Risking Art and Life in the Burmese Diaspora | APA Institute

Date: October 14, 2026 | 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM ET

Type/Location: In Person / New York, NY

Join the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU for a talk by Dr. Emily Hue, associate professor of Ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside. Dr. Hue will discuss her recent book on how diasporic Burmese artists navigate the intricate intersections of art, politics, and humanitarianism. Dr. Linda Luu, an interdisciplinary scholar of US empire, race, and therapeutic culture, will moderate the discussion.

https://www.nysean.org/events/performing-vulnerability-risking-art-and-life-in-the-burmese-diaspora

10/10/2026

Out of Sight, At Sea: Migrant Labor and the Hidden Worlds of Global Seafood | UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Date: October 13, 2026 | 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM ET

Type/Location: Hybrid / Los Angeles, CA

Join the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies for a talk by Beatrice Zani, Associate Research Professor at the French National Centre for Scientific Research. Drawing upon more than four years of ethnographic research in Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore, the talk explores the lives of Southeast Asian migrant fishers illustrating how labor takes shape across shifting maritime environments in which legal authority and accountability are fragmented.

https://www.nysean.org/events/out-of-sight-at-sea-migrant-labor-and-the-hidden-worlds-of-global-seafood

10/09/2026

Redistribution Without Institutional Reform: The Political Economy of Ethnic Wealth Redistribution in Malaysia, 1970–2024 | ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute

Date: October 11, 2026 | 10:00 PM – 11:30 PM ET

Type/Location: Hybrid / Singapore

Join the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a talk by Dr. Edmund Terence Gomez, Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at the Faculty of Business & Economics, Universiti Malaya. Dr. Gomez will discuss the political economy of ethnic wealth distribution in Malaysia from 1970 to 2024, including the interplay between state institutions, corporate ownership, and market access.

https://www.nysean.org/events/redistribution-without-institutional-reform-the-political-economy-of-ethnic-wealth-redistribution-in-malaysia-19702024

10/09/2026

Lee Kuan Yew Goes Global? | University of Michigan Center for Southeast Asian Studies

Date: October 9, 2026 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM ET

Type/Location: Hybrid / Ann Arbor, MI

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan for a talk by Say Jye Quah, Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University. This lecture explores the contradictions of Lee’s global legacy, situating his political thought, movements, and interventions within international trends. In this approach, his “original sin” is no longer detention without trial, but his role in legitimizing the Vietnam War.

https://www.nysean.org/events/lee-kuan-yew-goes-global

10/08/2026

Tagasaló o Nagsasalo? Precedents and Consequences of Intergenerational Support in Later-Life Filipino Families (October 15, 2026) -

Join NYSEAN and Sulo: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU for a talk by Dr. Kent Jason Cheng, assistant professor of gerontology at the University of Massachusetts - Boston. Dr. Cheng will discuss the precedents and consequences of both giving and receiving intergenerational support among older...

10/08/2026

Khmer Objects in Motion: Provenance, Dispersal, and Repatriation?

Date: October 8 – 9, 2026

Type/Location: Virtual

Join the Center for Khmer Studies (CKS) and the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) Siem Reap Center for a full-day online seminar bringing together more than 30 scholars, archaeologists, museum professionals, provenance researchers, heritage practitioners, and legal experts from around the world. Through a series of case studies, the seminar will explore the complex journeys of Khmer objects and the questions that emerge when we try to reconstruct their histories.

https://www.nysean.org/events/khmer-objects-in-motion-provenance-dispersal-and-repatriation

10/04/2026

On September 15, 2026, NYSEAN hosted a talk by Dr. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, professor at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University. He discusses the Thai monarchy’s strategic response to the 2020 youth-led protests that called for reforms to the royal family’s place in national life.

Abstract:

This talk discusses the Thai monarchy’s strategic response to the 2020 youth-led protests which called for reforms to the royal family’s place in national life. The speaker argues that King Vajiralongkorn did not merely seek to restore the status quo but executed a profound transformation which he terms ‘overt power codification and defensive hyper-personalisation.’ This shift converted informal influence into visible, legally codified, and personally commanded authority, entrenching absolute power within the constitutional framework to neutralise reformist momentum. The speaker documents this pivot across four interconnected institutional axes: financial codification, achieved through the 2017–18 legal restructuring that transferred Crown Property Bureau assets to Vajiralongkorn’s personal ownership; political gatekeeping, which used institutional proxies like the Senate and Constitutional Court to nullify electoral mandates; symbolic control, through a strategy of ‘defensive hyper-personalisation’ that asserts a direct personal command over the state, military, and dynastic narrative; and legal coercion, identifying the systematic weaponisation of the lèse-majesté law as it evolved from a criminal deterrent into a definitive constitutional veto. The speaker concludes that while the 2020 protests established royal reform as the central fault line of Thai politics, the monarchy’s aggressive consolidation has replaced the consensus-based network monarchy with a more confrontational and legally absolute model of rule.

About the Speaker:

Pavin Chachavalpongpun is professor at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, He is the chief editor of the online journal Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, in which all articles are translated from English into Japanese, Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Filipino, Vietnamese, Burmese and Khmer. Earning his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Pavin is the author and editor of several books including the upcoming, Kings in the American Mirror: Two Centuries of U.S.-Thai Monarchy Relations (University of Hawai’i Press).

Watch the recording here: https://www.nysean.org/blog/five-years-after-the-youth-protests-the-thai-monarchy-strikes-back

10/04/2026

On September 14, 2026, NYSEAN hosted a talk by Dr. Kota Watanabe, lecturer at Toyo University and former visiting scholar at NYU Wagner School of Public Service. He discusses the shaping of local orders behind the civil war and the expansion of online scamming in the borderlands of Myanmar.

Abstract:

This talk examines the shaping of local orders behind civil war and the expansion of online scamming in Myanmar’s borderlands. Following the 2021 military coup, the Chinese-operated scam industry proliferated along the Myanmar–Thai border, relying on fortified compounds and tens of thousands of trafficked workers from across Asia and beyond. Drawing upon field research conducted since 2021, the presentation asks why and how the scamming industry expanded despite escalating armed conflict and instability after the coup. To explain the apparent paradox, the talk analyzes the underlying political economy and the shaping of orders in the region. I argue that a negotiated order, shaped through decades of state coercion and co-option of the Karen insurgent groups and the brokerage by co-opted armed groups between the military–state and anti-state insurgents, facilitated the expansion of illicit economies, including online scamming. By foregrounding the relationship between local orders and illicit economies, this study contributes to broader debates on the political economy of civil war in Southeast Asia and beyond. It challenges the conventional narrative that simply links illicit economies to state absence and disorder, demonstrating instead how state control and order-making can actively enable their proliferation.

About the Speaker:

Kota Watanabe is lecturer at Toyo University, former Visiting Scholar at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and a member of NYSEAN. His research focuses on the political economy of civil wars, humanitarian care, and transnational organized crime in contemporary Myanmar. His current work is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Overseas Research Fellowship.

Watch the recording: https://www.nysean.org/blog/making-orders-in-contestation-civil-war-and-online-scams-in-myanmars-borderlands