New Books in Southeast Asian Studies
Episodes
Lia Kent, "The Unruly Dead: Spirits, Memory, and State Formation in Timor-Leste" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)
15 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“What might it mean to take the dead seriously as political actors?” asks Lia Kent in this exciting new contribution to critical human rights scho...
Nurhaizatul Jamil, "Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Nurhaizatul Jamil’s Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore (U Illinois Press, 2025) is a complex and meticulous eth...
Tim Connor et al., "Global Business and Local Struggle: Reimagining Non-Judicial Remedy for Human Rights" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
10 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the quest for human rights justice for communities and workers whose rights are breached by transnational businesses, non-judicial mechanisms (NJMs...
Leslie Barnes, "Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
07 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2025), Leslie Barnes examines the ambivalences that mar...
Chiang Mai 2015
02 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Gastronomica podcast returns to the air, bringing listeners new interviews with authors from the latest issues of Gastronomica: The Journal for...
Robert Cribb and Sandra Wilson, "Twelve Japanese War Criminals and One Who Got Away" (U Hawaiʻi Press, 2026)
01 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
“Japanese war crimes are notorious. During the Second World War, as Japanese forces overran Southeast Asia and the Pacific, they massacred, murdered...
Hans A. Harmakaputra, "Christian-Muslim Relations in Post-Reformation Indonesia: Resistance, Identity and Belonging" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)
31 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The post-Reformation era has witnessed a vastly changing landscape in Indonesian Islam, particularly with the emergence of conservative Muslim voices....
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
26 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On Feb. 6, 1945, just three days after the U.S. army started to fight the Japanese in the city of Manila, General Douglas MacArthur declared that “M...
Olivier Hein, "Borneo: The History of an Enigma" (Hurst, 2026)
12 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Borneo—split between two countries, home to some of the world’s oldest rainforests and a vast array of animal and plant life—is back in the news...
Miles Kenney-Lazar, "Socializing Land: Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos" (U Hawai’i Press, 2025)
04 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Since 2008, there has been tremendous public interest in the social and ecological ramifications of the global land rush, a rapid increase of capital ...
Good and Bad Palm Oil: Food Security, Paradigm Shift and Stakeholder Negotiations in Indonesia and the EU
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Entangled in a nexus of commerce, industry, food security, and environmental concerns, palm oil has become a prominent topic of controversy and debate...
Thailand’s February 2026 Snap Election: A Conversation with Prof Duncan McCargo
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode unpacks the 8 February 2026 snap election and constitutional referendum in Thailand. The results paint a mixed picture: a decisive win fo...
Sugata Bose, "Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century" (Harvard UP, 2024)
15 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The balance of global power changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century, above all with the economic and political rise of Asia. Asia...
Himanshu Prabha Ray ed., "Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections" (Routledge, 2026)
15 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections (Routledge, 2026) assesses the impact of European colonization in the late 1...
Cindy Anh Nguyen, "Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam" (U California Press, 2026)
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Libraries in French colonial Vietnam functioned as symbols of Western modernity and infrastructures of colonial knowledge. Yet Vietnamese readers purs...
Wisdom of the Goddess: The Divine Feminine in South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Himalayan Art
05 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Hillary Langberg discusses Wisdom of the Goddess, an online exhibition she curated for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art featuring nine ...
Michael Hurley, "Waterways of Bangkok: Memory, Landscape and Twilight" (NUS Press, 2025)
01 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Bangkok is one of the world’s great cities, and the central artery of that city is the Chaophraya River. Michael Hurley’s book, Waterways of Bang...
Sara Ann Swenson, "Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charity in Urban Vietnam" (Oxford UP, 2025)
15 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sara Swenson is Assistant Professor of Religion and Affiliated Faculty in Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages at Dartmouth College. Her areas of ...
Julia H. Meszaros, "Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women’s Labor" (Rutgers UP, 2025)
12 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Economies of Gender: Masculinity, "Mail Order Brides," and Women's Labor (Rutgers University Press, 2025) by Dr. Julia Meszaros offers a provocative ...
Lin Hongxuan, "Ummah Yet Proletariat: Islam, Marxism, and the Making of the Indonesian Republic" (Oxford UP, 2023)
25 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In contemporary Indonesia the idea that Islam and Marxism are inherently incompatible has become deeply entrenched. However, as Lin Hongxuan's work U...
Joanna Siekiera, "International Law and Security in Indo-Pacific: Strategic Design for the Region" (Routledge, 2025)
20 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
International Law and Security in Indo-Pacific: Strategic Design for the Region (Routledge, 2025) edited by Dr. Joanna Siekiera uses an interdiscip...
Talking Thai Politics: China's Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How has China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs transformed itself into one of the most assertive diplomatic actors on the global stage? What explains t...
Kathryn Chelminski, "Governing Energy Transitions: A Study of Regime Complex Effectiveness on Geothermal Development in Indonesia and the Philippines" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the world moves with increasing urgency to mitigate climate change and catalyze energy transitions to net zero, understanding the governance mechan...
Charles Higham, "Early Southeast Asia: From First Humans to First Civilizations" (NUS Press, 2024)
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In September 2025 the Dutch government announced that it would return to Indonesia the fossilized remains of the famous ‘Java Man’, the first know...
Stephen Murphy, "Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2024)
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This important new work, Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2023) by Stephen Murphy...
Nayanjot Lahiri, "Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand" (SUNY Press, 2023)
29 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Blending travelogue, history, and archaeology, Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand (SUNY Press, 2023) unravels...
Ivan Franceschini et al., "Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds" (Verso Books, 2025)
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“If I had been enslaved for a year or two, I might not be able to believe in humanity any more.” “I am a victim of modern slavery.” These chi...
Sonia Faleiro, "The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia" (Columbia UP, 2025)
14 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the robe becomes a weapon, who can stop the violence? We think of Buddhism as a faith of peace—rooted in compassion, patience, and nonviolence...
Stephen Huard, "Calibrated Engagement: Chronicles of Local Politics in the Heartland of Myanmar" (Berghahn Books, 2024)
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of New Books in Southeast Asian Studies features Stéphen Huard talking about Calibrated Engagement: Chronicles of Local Politics in...
Jeff Neilson, "Fortress Farming: Agrarian Transitions, Livelihoods, and Coffee Value Chains in Indonesia" (Cornell UP, 2025)
25 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last several decades, sources of income derived away from farms have come to play a much bigger role in rural Indonesian households. How do r...
Vincent Pak, "Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) explores Christian discourses of s...
Kathryn Dyt, "The Nature of Kingship: The Weather-World in Nineteenth-Century Vietnam" (U Hawaii Press, 2025)
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When we think about the way that Southeast Asian rulers governed their kingdoms, we usually think of the relationship between the rulers and the peopl...
Timothy Williams, "Memory Politics After Mass Violence: Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape" (Bristol UP, 2025)
27 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Memory Politics After Mass Violence: Attributing Roles in the Memoryscape (Bristol UP, 2025) explores how political actors draw on memories of ...
Localisation of Islamic Arts in Malaysia
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Malay world boasts a wealth of diverse cultures. The arrival of Islam in the Malay world during the 12th to 13th centuries permanently transformed...
Ruth E. Toulson, "Necropolitics of the Ordinary: Death and Grieving in Contemporary Singapore" (U Washington Press, 2024)
07 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Can a state make its people forget the dead? Cemeteries have become sites of acute political contestation in the city-state of Singapore. Confronted w...
Sam Dalrymple, "Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia" (William Collins, 2025)
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Partition—the rapid, uncoordinated, and bloody split between India and Pakistan after the Second World War—remains the central event of South Asia...
Matthew Bowser, "Containing Decolonization: British Imperialism and the Politics of Race in Late Colonial Burma" (Manchester UP, 2025)
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Containing Decolonization: British Imperialism and the Politics of Race in Late Colonial Burma (Manchester University Press, 2025), historian Mat...
Islam, Society, and Politics in Indonesia: An Interview with Robert Hefner
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode focuses on the intersection of Islam, society, and politics in Indonesia, the world’s single-largest majority Muslim country and t...
Timothy Barnard, "Imperial Creatures: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942" (NUS Press, 2019)
26 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Imperial Creature: Humans and Other Animals in Colonial Singapore, 1819-1942 (National University of Singapore Press, 2019), Timothy Barnard explor...
Robert Cribb et al., "Detention Camps in Asia: The Conditions of Confinement in Modern Asian History" (Brill, 2022)
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why have Asian states - colonial and independent - imprisoned people on a massive scale in detention camps? How have detainees experienced the long m...
Jamie Wang, "Reimagining the More-Than-Human City: Stories from Singapore" (MIT Press, 2024)
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As climate change accelerates and urbanization intensifies, our need for more sustainable and livable cities has never been more urgent. Yet, the imag...
Iban Heritage and Culture in Malaysia
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every June, there is a significant cultural event in Malaysia, which is called the Gawai Dayak Festival, highly celebrated to mark the end of the harv...
Stuck at Home: Pandemic Immobilities in the Nation of Emigration
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are joined by Dr Yasmin Ortiga, Associate Professor of Sociology at Singapore Management University, to speak to us about her late...
Preserving Traditional Rice and Rice Culture in the Philippines
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the Philippines, rice serves as a fundamental component of the diet, typically accompanying most meals as either white or brown rice. It is also a ...
Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist-Inflected Sovereignties Across the Indian Ocean: A Pali Arena, 1200-1550" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries new kingdoms emerged in Sri Lanka and mainland Southeast Asia. Sovereignty in these new kingdoms was ex...
Chiara Formichi, "Islam and Asia: A History" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Challenging the geographical narrative of the history of Islam, Chiara Formichi’s new book Islam and Asia: A History (Cambridge University Press, 20...
Childhood malnutrition and pneumonia in Timor-Leste
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Nick Fancourt is a Horizon Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the Sydney Medical School. He also works as a paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital a...
Gary Kulik, "Conscientious Objectors at War: The Vietnam War's Forgotten Medics" (Texas Tech UP, 2025)
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
During the war in Vietnam, thousands of young men served as conscientious objector medics. They had been certified by their local draft boards as nonc...
Phyu Phyu Oo, "Conflict-related Sexual Violence in Myanmar: The Role of the State" (De Gruyter, 2025)
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Systemic sexual violence by the Myanmar army and proxies began to be widely reported in the 2010s, in the course of genocidal violence against Rohingy...
Kelly A. Spring, "SPAM: A Global History" (Reaktion, 2025)
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a conflict that solidified SPAM’s place in global food culture. Created...
Simon Butt, "Judicial Dysfunction in Indonesia" (Melbourne UP, 2023)
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Indonesia's judicial system has long been described as dysfunctional. Many of its problems developed out of decades of authoritarian rule, which began...
Kampung Activism in Indonesia
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My village, my kampung. The term kampung is a Malay word, referring to a "village hamlet" or "urban informal settlement." As rapid urbanization takes ...
Tina Chen and Charlotte Eubanks, "Global Asias: Tactics & Theories" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Global Asias: Tactics & Theories is the inaugural volume in an exciting new series that explores critical concerns animating Global Asias scholarship...
Zev Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, scribes across East Asia used Chinese characters to write things down–even in languages based on very different foundations than Chin...
Heather Sutherland, "Seaways and Gatekeepers: Trade and State in the Eastern Archipelagos of Southeast Asia, C.1600-c.1906" (NUS Press, 2021)
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The eastern archipelagos stretch from Mindanao and Sulu in the north to Bali in the southwest and New Guinea in the southeast. Many of their inhabitan...
Malaysian-Nordic Relations
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the latest episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Professor Julie Yu-Wen Chen of the University of Helsinki speaks with Mr. Mohamed Ariff Bin Mohamed ...
Wolfram H. Dressler, "For the Sake of Forests and Gods: Governing Life and Livelihood in the Philippine Uplands" (Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2025)
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For the Sake of Forests and Gods: Governing Life and Livelihood in the Philippine Uplands (Cornell University Press, 2025) examines the impacts of re...
How do Small States Navigate and Shape the Liberal World Order? A conversation with Dylan Loh
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Globally, the liberal international order has been under pressure for quite some time, but we often tend to discuss this in relation to big internatio...
The May 2025 Mid-Term Elections in the Philippines
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s episode focuses on the mid-term elections in the Philippines which were held in May of this year, including all local elected positions, all...
Ioana Emy Matesan, "The Violence Pendulum: Tactical Change in Islamist Groups in Egypt and Indonesia" (Oxford UP, 2020)
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Research shows that repression can lead to both radicalization and deradicalization. When does it drive groups to pick up arms, and under what conditi...
Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024)
22 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary ...
Vivian Kong, "Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
22 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to be British? To answer this, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45 (Cambridge UP, 2023) by Dr. Vivian...
Kevin Nguyen, "My Documents" (One World, 2025)
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Nguyen, My Documents (One World, 2025) Kevin Nguyen is the author of the novel New Waves, published in 2020. He is the features editor at T...
Geoffrey Wawro, "The Vietnam War: A Military History" (Basic Books, 2024)
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Vietnam War cast a shadow over the American psyche from the moment it began. In its time it sparked budget deficits, campus protests, and an erosi...
Sven Trakulhun, "Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Siam had been dealing with Christian missionaries for centuries, but from the 1830s a new wave of Protestant missionaries began to work in Siam, just ...
Xing Hang, "The Port: Hà Tiên and the Mo Clan in Early Modern Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Port (present-day Hà Tiên), situated in the Mekong River Delta and Gulf of Siam littoral, was founded and governed by the Chinese creole Mo clan...
Marine Environment Assessment in Palawan, Philippines
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Billy Haworth is a geographer interested in human-environment interactions, with expertise positioned at the intersection of human geography, criti...
Selda Altan, "Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway" (Stanford UP, 2024)
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chinese workers helped build the modern world. They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the constructi...
Gazi Mizanur Rahman, "In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gazi Mizanur Rahman’s In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community (Cambridge University Press, 2024) offers the fir...
Qingfei Yin, "State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Departing from conventional studies of border hostility in inter-Asian relations, Yin Qingfei explores how two revolutionary states - China and Vietna...
Guo Quan Seng, "Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia" (SAPP, 2023)
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia (SAPP, 2023), Guo-Quan Seng provides a gendered history of sett...
Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025)
03 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, in...
Lian Sinclair, "Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations" (Manchester UP, 2024)
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why do multinational mining corporations use participation to undermine resistance? Do the struggles of local communities, activists and NGOs matter o...
Talking Thai Politics: Reporting Thai Politics Internationally
29 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What is it like to be a foreign correspondent in Thailand? How can someone develop sufficient understanding of this complex society to write effective...
Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
27 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In our conversation about The Battle of Manila (Oxford University Press, 2025), Nicholas Evan Sarantakes explains how U.S. forces under General Doug...
Max Hastings, “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975” (Harper, 2018)
22 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
People of various political stripes in many countries (particularly those countries where various political stripes are allowed) have been arguing abo...
Farouk Yahya, "Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts" (Brill, 2015)
19 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts (Brill, 2015) offers an integrated study of the texts and images of illustrated Malay manuscri...
Is Democracy and Peace Possible in Myanmar? A Conversation with Claire Smith
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the civil conflict in Myanmar passes its fourth anniversary, is this ethnically complex country any closer to a peaceful resolution of its internal...
Insects as a Natural and Cultural Resource across Southeast Asia
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Every year, World Wildlife Conservation Day is observed on 4 December. It reminds us of the importance of protecting our biodiversity, a message that ...
Georgina Banks, "Back to Bangka: Searching for the Truth about a Wartime Massacre" (Viking Australia, 2023)
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Georgina Banks searches for the truth of what happened to her Great Aunt ‘Bud’, killed in the Second World War. Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942. Al...
Studying Myanmar in Times of Crises
11 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do we to study Myanmar when access to the country is so difficulty? In this episode, Kristina Kironska and Monika Verma from the Myanmar Studies ...
Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller, "Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago" (U California Press, 2025)
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Although the history of Indonesian music has received much attention from ethnomusicologists and Western composers alike, almost nothing has been writ...
Tana Li, "A Maritime Vietnam: From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of Vietnamese history, we tend to think of plucky peasant guerillas fighting for their independence against French colonial rule or Amer...
Syaifudin Zuhri, "Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition" (Leiden UP, 2022)
28 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Syaifudin Zuhri’s book Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition (Leiden, 2022) is a detailed examination o...
Sustainable Teamwork and Team Leadership in Southeast Asia
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The workplace is forever facing new challenges. These challenges are also unique in the context of Southeast Asia. Effective team work and leadership ...
Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023)
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Guangxi, a region on China's southern border with Vietnam, has a large population of ethnic minorities and a history of rebellion and intergroup confl...
Ian G. Baird, "Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and Between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)
01 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Before the creation of the European colonial states in the nineteenth century, Southeast Asia had hundreds of royal families, large and small. Today, ...
Kishore Mahbubani, "Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir" (Public Affairs, 2024)
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kishore Mahbubani, longtime Singaporean diplomat and academic, opens his new memoir with a provocative line: “Blame it on the damn British.” Kisho...
David R. Saunders, "Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965" (Cornell UP, 2024)
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965 (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr...
Joshua Barker, "State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City" (Duke UP, 2024)
16 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The relationship between fear people experience in their lives and the government often informs key questions about the rule of law and justice. In na...
Bertil Lintner, "The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar" (Oxford UP, 2024)
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Four years ago, on Feb. 1 2021, the Burmese military overthrew the fledgling democratic government in the Southeast Asian country of Burma, officially...
Agricultural and Resource Economics in Vietnam
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Agriculture remains a key sector of the economies of most Southeast Asian countries. It is supposed to provide nutritious, affordable, accessible and ...
Magic, Death, and Necromancy with Justin McDaniel
05 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
**Warning: This episode contains potentially disturbing content!** On this episode of the Black Beryl, I sit down with Justin McDaniel, a scholar of T...
Talking Thai Politics: Chanintorn Pensute, The Cost of Politics in Thailand
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How much does it cost to become an MP in Thailand? Is entering parliamentary politics prohibitively expensive for ordinary people? Has the rise of the...
Book Chat: The Life Story of Father Nguyễn, a Vietnamese Refugee Who Migrated to Taiwan, with Lin Shu-fen
26 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, the host, Lara Momesso, introduces a book she co-edited with Dr Polina Ivanova (University of Bremen) titled Refugees and Asylum See...
Katharine E. McGregor, "Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)
19 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The system of prostitution imposed and enforced by the Japanese military during its wartime occupation of several countries in East and Southeast Asia...
Adrian de Leon, "Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America" (UNC Press, 2023)
11 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a book that pulls together both sides of the Pacific, Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America (UNC Press, 2023) asks the question: wha...
Taomo Zhou, “Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War” (Cornell UP, 2019)
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If tales of China’s radical ‘opening up’ to the world over the last 30 years imply that the country was somehow ‘closed’ before this, then o...
China and the Indo-Pacific: Policies and Global Implications
27 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why has the Indo-Pacific become the pre-eminent theatre of global geo-strategic and geo-economic competition? What is the interest and role of differe...
Juan José Rivas Moreno, "The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many authors have written about the Manila Galleons, the massive ships that took goods back and forth between Acapulco and Manila, ferrying silver one...