Events

CHAIRPERSON

Dr Yang Yang, Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore

PROGRAMME

ABSTRACT

This roundtable features a discussion of the open access book Transnational Southeast Asia (2025), which presents Southeast Asia as a conceptually meaningful site to interrogate the transnational paradigm. In featuring research from and across different nations in Southeast Asia, the book asks in what ways Southeast Asia lends itself to nuanced applications of transnationalism, and what the wider cultural and collective implications of that might be.

The transnational paradigm, a conceptual tool encompassing various configurations of transnationalism across disciplines, becomes relevant for analysing global cultural flows, but not without due consideration of the nuances shaped by spatio-temporal trends. A paradigm shift in transnationalism from historical connections to contemporary connectivity is afforded by increased mobility and accelerated cultural flows, which have given rise to unprecedented economic productivity in the past century and digital connectivity in the new millennium – a shift that the chapters collectively explore. Relevant to advanced students and scholars across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, focused on Southeast Asia, this book unpicks and unpacks this long-discussed aspect within Asian ‘area studies’.

The roundtable brings together the book’s co-editors and commentators working in history, literary studies, anthropology, and cultural studies, who reflect critically on the volume’s core questions: What does transnationalism look like from Southeast Asia? What does it mean to rethink the region through the transnational paradigm? How might these reconfigurations contribute to broader debates in global and area studies?

Transnational Southeast Asia offers a timely and in-depth exploration of transnationalism as both theory and method, contributing to ongoing efforts to decentre and decolonise knowledge production within Asian area studies. The roundtable extends the book’s timely and in-depth exploration by fostering an interdisciplinary dialogue on the book’s key themes, highlighting the region’s significance in shaping global conversations on transnationalism.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Hannah M. Y. Ho is Research Associate at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS), and Assistant Professor of English Studies at University of Brunei Darussalam, where she also serves as Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian Studies. She completed her PhD at the University of York (UK), followed by postdoctoral fellowships at King’s College London and the University of California, Berkeley. She is Associate Editor of Southeast Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal and was previously a NUS Fellow (Southeast Asia, 2023). In 2023, she was listed among the World’s Top 2% Scientists. Her research has appeared in leading international peer-reviewed journals, including Asiatic, Kritika Kultura, Global Society, Science Fiction Studies, Southeast Asian Review of English, South Asian Diaspora and Journal of Postcolonial Writing (forthcoming). Her book publications include Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature and Culture (2021), co-edited with David Deterding, and Transnational Southeast Asia (2025), co-edited with Ying-kit Chan. She is currently working on a monograph on Brunei literatures under contract with Springer.

Ying-kit Chan is Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at National University of Singapore (NUS). He received his PhD in East Asian Studies from Princeton University and BA and MA degrees in Chinese Studies from NUS. His books include Southeast Asia in China: Historical Entanglements and Contemporary Engagements (2023), Contesting Chineseness: Ethnicity, Identity, and Nation in China and Southeast Asia (2021), and Alternative Representations of the Past: The Politics of History in Modern China (2020).

Eric C. Thompson is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at National University of Singapore (NUS). He completed a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Washington and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of California Los Angeles. He is Co-Editor of Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Associate Editor of Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. He has conducted research for three decades throughout Southeast Asia, primarily in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. His research interests include transnational networking, urban-rural interactions, planetary urbanization, culture theory, and ASEAN regionalism. His work has appeared in the journals American Ethnologist, Asian Studies Review, Citizenship Studies, Contemporary Sociology, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Current Anthropology, Field Methods, Gender Place and Culture, Global Networks, Political Geography, Urban Studies, and Women’s Studies International Forum among others. He is the author of Unsettling Absences: Urbanism in Rural Malaysia (NUS Press, 2007), Attitudes and Awareness toward ASEAN (with Chulanee Thianthai, ISEAS Press, 2008) and, Do Young People Know ASEAN? (with Moe Thuzar and Chulanee Thianthai, 2015). His recent book is entitled The Story of Southeast Asia (NUS Press, 2024).

Chang-Yau Hoon is Professor and Director of International Office, Singapore University of Social Sciences. He is also Adjunct Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, and Editor-in-Chief of Asia in Transition Book Series under Springer Nature. He was formerly Professor of Anthropology at the Institute of Asian Studies, and Director of the Centre for Advanced Research, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. He specialises in Chinese diaspora, identity politics, multiculturalism, and religious and cultural diversity in contemporary Southeast Asia. His book publications include Christianity and the Chinese in Indonesia: Ethnicity, Education and Enterprise (2023) and Southeast Asia in China: Historical Entanglements and Contemporary Engagements, with Ying-kit Chan, Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. His volumes include Stability, Growth and Sustainability: Catalysts for Socio-economic Development in Brunei Darussalam, edited with Aris Ananta and Mahani Hamdan, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing (2023), and Contesting Chineseness: Nation, Ethnicity and Identity in China and Southeast Asia, edited with Ying-kit Chan, Singapore: Springer (2021).