PHIR staff active in publishing and public debate

PHIR staff have been active in a number of areas in recent months.

The 3rd edition of The New Global Politics in the Asia Pacific, co-authored by Michael Connors in conjunction with Jörn Dosch and Rémy Davison, is due to come out later this year. Michael also presented a paper at the International Convention of Asian Scholars (20-23 July 2017) on populism in Thailand, and the previous month organised a workshop on political ideologies in Southeast Asia in collaboration with IAPS and the Institute of Asian Studies at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.

On 9 July 2017, Sumit Mandal gave a public talk on his research in a panel discussion entitled “Sacred Geographies of Southeast Asia: Sites of Cross-Cultural Interaction” that was organised by Imagined Malaysia. The co-panellist was Simon Soon of Universiti Malaya and the chair was Netusha Naidu, co-founder of Imagined Malaysia and second-year student in PHIR. More information on the event as well as video recordings of the talks are available here on Imagined Malaysia’s Facebook page. Sumit spoke on the topic "Once Guarded by Sea Creatures: Muslim Shrines in Aceh”; he presented some aspects of the long-term research he has been doing on keramat or Muslim shrines in the Malay world.

An article entitled “Promoting ASEAN Awareness at the Higher Education Chalkface”, co-authored by Linda Quayle of PHIR and Dian Azmawati of Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, appeared in the April volume of Contemporary Southeast Asia. Linda’s most recent article, “Indonesia, the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, and the Contingent Profile of Regional ‘Great-Power Management’”, was published by The Pacific Review (early online access) in June.