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Southeast Asian Studies
Southeast Asian Studies May 27, 2023

Tragic Nation

Burma--Why and How Democracy Failed

Amitav Acharya

Hosted by Duncan McCargo
What went wrong with Burma’s democratic experiment? How are we to understand the country’s turbulent politics in the wake of the 2021 coup? In this conversation with Duncan McCargo, Amitav …

Southeast Asian Studies

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Interviews with scholars of Southeast Asia about their new books hosted by Michele Ford, Patrick Jory, Duncan McCargo, and Faizah Zakaria.

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Southeast Asian Studies May 15, 2023

Narrating Democracy in Myanmar

The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers

Tamas Wells

Hosted by Michele Ford
Tamas Wells' book Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers (Amsterdam UP, 2021) analyses what Myanmar's struggle for democracy signified to Burmese activists and democratic …
General History May 15, 2023

Khmer Nationalist

Sơn Ngc Thành, the CIA, and the Transformation of Cambodia

Matthew Jagel

Hosted by Michael Vann
Khmer Nationalist: Sơn Ngc Thành, the CIA, and the Transformation of Cambodia (Northern Illinois UP, 2023) is a political history of Cambodia from World War II until 1975, examining the …
Diplomatic History May 15, 2023

Practicing Peace

Conflict Management in Southeast Asia and South America

Aarie Glas

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Southeast Asia and South America are regions made up of largely illiberal states lacking stabilizing great powers or collective identities. But despite persistent territorial disputes, regime instability, and interstate rivalries …
SSEAC Stories May 13, 2023

Locating Human Dignity in Cambodia

Prospects for Human Rights Education

Rachel Killean

Hosted by Natali Pearson
The concept of human dignity is a foundational one within human rights discourses, and is commonly used in the context of human rights and sustainable development policies and programs. But …
High Theory May 12, 2023

Global Asia

A Discussion with Cheryl Narumi Naruse

Cheryl Narumi Naruse

Hosted by Saronik Bosu
Cheryl Narumi Naruse talks about the transformation of Singapore over the past decades into a site of postcolonial promise, with economic prosperity and cultural soft power. She discusses a range …
Asian Review of Books May 4, 2023

Tragic Nation

Burma--Why and How Democracy Failed

Amitav Acharya

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
In mid-April, Myanmar’s military bombed a village in the country’s northwest, killing over a hundred people in what’s been considered the deadliest attack in the now two-year civil war in …
General History April 30, 2023

A History of Plague in Java, 1911-1942

Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk

Hosted by Michael Vann
I was very excited to chat with Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk as we share some obsessions, namely rats and plague in colonial Southeast Asia. His A History of Plague in Java …
Asian Review of Books April 27, 2023

I Feel No Peace

Rohingya Fleeing Over Seas and Rivers

Kaamil Ahmed

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
The Rohingya population, from Myanmar’s Rakhine State, are a community almost living entirely in exile, whether in refugee camps in Bangladesh, or working on boats throughout the Indian Ocean. The …
Mobilities and Methods April 23, 2023

Passport Entanglements

Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations

Nicole Constable

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations (U California Press, 2022) examines the problems with documents issued to Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong and explores the larger role that passports …
Military History April 23, 2023

The Long Reckoning

A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam

George Black

Hosted by AJ Woodhams
The American war in Vietnam has left many long-lasting scars that have not yet been sufficiently examined. The worst of them were inflicted in a tiny area bounded by the …
Nordic Asia Podcast April 21, 2023

The Promise of Multispecies Justice

A Discussion with Sophie Chao

Sophie Chao, Karin Bolender, and Eben Kirksey

Hosted by Terese Gagnon
How might we imagine justice in times of ecological harm? How are human struggles for social justice entangled with the lives of other beings including plants, animals, fungi, and microbes …
Asian Review of Books April 20, 2023

Welcome Me to the Kingdom

Stories

Mai Nardone

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
Mai Nardone’s Welcome Me to the Kingdom (Random House, 2023) opens with two migrants from Thailand’s northeast who travel to Bangkok to make a new life for themselves in the …
Chinese Studies April 19, 2023

Contesting Chineseness

Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese Migrants

Sylvia Ang

Hosted by Bernard Keo
The question of who is Chinese and how Chineseness as an identity is constituted has been a recurring question, particularly in the context of the extensive Chinese diasporic community. In …
Southeast Asian Studies April 15, 2023

Gender in Southeast Asia

Mina Roces

Hosted by Nicole Curato
Gender in Southeast Asia (Cambridge UP, 2022) examines how gender norms are constructed and contested in a region the book describes as ‘a fertile place for analysing gender differences that both …
SSEAC Stories April 13, 2023

The Politics of Ethnicity in the Malay World

A Discussion with Tom Pepinsky

Tom Pepinsky

Hosted by Natali Pearson
Malaysia is a classic example of a plural society, with a diverse population consisting of the indigenous peoples, collectively called bumiputera, and the descendants of immigrant populations from southern China …
General History April 12, 2023

Settling for Less

Why States Colonize and Why They Stop

Lachlan McNamee

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Over the past few centuries, vast areas of the world have been violently colonized by settlers. But why did states like Australia and the United States stop settling frontier lands …
Nordic Asia Podcast April 7, 2023

Visibility as Threat

The Targeting of Micro-Sized Groups in Indonesia

Jessica Soedirgo

Hosted by Nordic Asia Podcast
Why do very small groups, like the Ahmadiyah sect in Indonesia, become targets of mobilization and repression? How do political entrepreneurs play a role in facilitating violence against such groups …
Asian Review of Books April 6, 2023

Return of the Junta

Why Myanmar’s Military Must Go Back to the Barracks

Oliver Slow

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
The Myanmar coup on February 1, 2021 shocked the world, and ended an opening that had fostered hopes for democratization and economic development. The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military, reversed a decade’s …
Southeast Asian Studies April 1, 2023

Dynastic Democracy

Political Families of Thailand

Yoshinori Nishizaki

Hosted by Patrick Jory
When scholars analyse Thai politics, they tend to give importance to institutions like the monarchy, the military, the parliament, and political parties; or, political ideas like ‘royalist nationalism’ or democracy …