2019 Events

Join us for the launch of Laksmi Pamuntjak’s third novel, Fall Baby, about the intricacies of art, religion, politics and history in a troubled Indonesia, but also about family, identity, motherhood, and the sisterhood of women.

Postgraduate students in Creative Writing, Indonesian Studies, International and Comparative Literary Studies and associated disciplines are invited to join internationally- renowned author Laksmi Pamuntjak for a Masterclass at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Laksmi will share her experiences in publishing and translation, and provide advice to students on using different genres for different audiences and writing more creatively. Laksmi will also discuss the complexities of working across multiple languages and literary translation, and the challenges of writing difficult histories.

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus in Australian scholarship on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, known formally as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Join us for a one-day roundtable, aimed at sharing ideas and developing work-in-progress papers.

The fourth ReelOzInd! Australia Indonesia Short Film Competition is coming to Sydney! Join us for an exclusive screening of the award-winning films.

Join us for a compelling discussion of the relationship between Thailand and the United States. Thailand is the United States’ oldest ally in Asia. The two countries signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1836 which served as a foundation for strong bilateral ties, and bilateral relations were progressively solidified particularly during the Cold War.

This talk focuses on the “image-event,” a political process set in motion when specific images erupt onto and intervene in the public realm, triggering affective response and discursive engagement across diverse and overlapping publics.

Chinese Indonesians are a culturally, socially, and politically diverse group. In the political sphere, and despite the resistance of many overseas Chinese to such characterisations, the overseas Chinese in Indonesia and elsewhere have often been seen as a resource or proxy for Beijing’s advancement of its interests abroad. In the cultural sphere, the Chinese-Indonesian contribution has spanned traditional and modern genres including opera, puppetry and spoken theatre as well as musical forms, thereby profoundly enriching Indonesia’s cultural palette.

Indonesia is home to one of the world’s largest Chinese-descended populations. Their historical impact is often measured in economic terms but was equally important in the realm of language and literature.

Growth has outpaced governance, and opportunities to come together online are increasingly being undone by threats of division, such as the spread of hate speech and harassment, to political falsehoods and 'deepfakes'. What can we do to regulate this?

From its westernmost island of Sabang to its easternmost city of Merauke in West Papua, from Miangas Island in the north, near the Philippines border, to Ndana Island, close to the coast of Australia, Harsono reveals the particular cultural identities and localised political dynamics of this internally complex and driven nation.

In Indonesian historiography, the 1930s tends to be overshadowed by the 1926-7 communist uprisings, and the Japanese occupation of the Netherlands East Indies from 1942–1945. Despite the imposition of strict press libel laws and restrictions on the freedom of assembly, the discursive output of the Indonesian anticolonial movement (the pergerakan) remained febrile for large swathes of the 1930s. This talk explores how Islam and socialism were deeply intertwined in the pergerakan discourse of this period, by focusing on vernacular Indonesian print culture produced by both self-consciously Islamic anticolonial activists as well as by avowed socialists.

Contention has surrounded the status of minorities throughout Indonesian history. Two broad polarities are evident: one inclusive of minorities, regarding them as part of the nation’s rich complexity and a manifestation of its “Unity in Diversity” motto; the other exclusive, viewing with suspicion or disdain those communities or groups that differ from the perceived majority.

Join us for a discussion of the impact of agribusiness and the palm oil industry on Indonesia’s Marind community in West Papua.

Explore China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Explore the key issues at stake for Indonesia in the lead-up to the 2019 election. 

Explore the key issues at stake in Thailand following the historic 2019 elections. 

Join co-founders of Asia Justice and Rights (AJAR), Patrick Burgess and Galuh Wandita, to discuss key lessons on transitional justice in Asia.

Join ethnomusicologist Dr Philip Yampolsky as he reports on a 15-year project to research the representation of Indonesian regional music and theatre on VCD.

Join us for the launch of Associate Professor Catherine Renshaw’s latest book.

Postgraduate students and early to mid-career researchers focusing on Southeast Asia are invited to attend a dedicated writing retreat. This retreat is designed to provide you with both inspiration and peer support to kick off the year.

Join us for a discussion of the Indonesian novel, The Bearded Turtle, with Dr Jesse Grayman.

Cambodian psychotherapist Yim Sotheary reflected on working with survivors of Khmer-Rouge era sexual and gender-based crimes, as well as the role of art as a tool for justice and healing for these crimes. In particular, Yim Sotheary considered “Pka Sla Krom Angkar”, a dance which explores the theme of marriage during the Khmer Rouge period.

In June 2019, the ancient city of Bagan, Myanmar, was finally inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, some 24 years after it was first nominated. Join us to learn more about the outstanding universal value of this sacred landscape, and the process by which its historical and religious significance was acknowledged and celebrated by the international community.

Join Dr Andres Rodriguez and Dr Susan Banki for a compelling discussion of China and Burma’s ethnic policies in multicultural border areas in 1945-1948.

In celebration of World Climate Day, join us to discuss environmental conservation in the Asia-Pacific. This talk will cover some current financing strategies for environmental conservation, including Payments for Ecosystem Services, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Impact Investing.

The 4^th Conference on Human Rights provides a platform for academics, human rights activists and practitioners to explore current human rights issues in Southeast Asia. 

On World Mental Health Day, join us for a ground-breaking discussion of mental health services in Indonesia.

Join us for a compelling discussion of race relations and racism in Singapore with activist Sangeetha Thanapal.

Join Assistant Professor Eric Vanden Bussche (University of Tokyo) as he analyses the Sino-Burmese border demarcation process and provides new insights on China’s territorial and maritime disputes in Southeast Asia.

Cambodia’s infamous history is fraught with human rights abuses. Yet its recent history has not been without stains either. Human Rights Watch Australia Director Elaine Pearson discussed the state of human rights in Cambodia with SSEAC Postdoctoral Research Associate Dr Kristy Ward.

Join the University of Sydney’s Tim Soutphommasane for a one-day workshop on mainstreaming human rights into your teaching and research on Southeast Asia.

The remarkable fly-on-the-wall documentary High Noon in Jakarta is an intimate portrayal of Bapak Abdurrahman Wahid's presidency.

Buoyancy reveals the confronting reality of slavery within Southeast Asia’s fishing industry – a fate befalling thousands of young men – from the highly personal and intensely relatable perspective of a 16 year-old Cambodian boy.

The Southeast Asia Emerging Scholars Conference provides a forum to bring together expertise on Southeast Asia from postgraduates and early career researchers at the University of Sydney and beyond.

Research has long established that the environment can significantly affect your mental health, both positively and negatively. Vietnam has experienced rapid urbanisation in the last few decades – what has been the impact on the local population?

Although rates of tuberculosis (TB) in Australia are now historically low, decades of neglect and political inaction mean that TB is once again the world's deadliest infectious disease, responsible for the deaths of 1.3m people in 2017. TB is also the number-one cause of death for people with HIV globally and responsible for the greatest share of deaths from antimicrobial resistance. The Asia-Pacific region is home to 60% of the global burden of TB.

Join Janet Steele, author of Mediating Islam: Cosmopolitan Journalisms in Muslim Southeast Asia, for a seminar on Islamic journalism.

Conferences are back, and they’re more exciting – and complicated! – than ever. Regardless of whether you’ll be presenting face to face, online, or in hybrid form, we are all keen to get back out there and share our research. This workshop is designed to help you build your public speaking skills and present with confidence at your next academic speaking engagement.

Join eminent historian Tony Reid for a discussion of his first historical novel.