Latest Articles

Inter-regional soldiering ties and transnational mobility link Nepal to Southeast Asia. For former Gurkhas, their transition to entrepreneurship in the highlands of the Himalayas underscores the vital link between transnational soldiering, local tourism, and the socio-economic transformation of the village community.

Are the blue bins in Singapore working? Or is there a deeper problem with recycling practices in our little island-state?

Dr Dhiraj Kumar Mohan Nainani has recently joined us as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Asian Urbanisms Cluster (Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore). In this Q&A, we sit down with Dr Dhiraj to ask how he arrived at his research, his thoughts on the field of legal geography, and his interests outside of academia.

What language should one use when producing Southeast Asian Studies as a scholar based in Latin America? At the heart of this linguistic quandary appears to be between the isolation of the scholar or the underdevelopment of the field in Latin America.

As the China-US rivalry heats up, could invoking a shared memory of cooperation be the key towards a peaceful resolution of regional and global conflicts?

The idea of carbon credit trading is not new but what is it exactly, why does it matter now, and how does it relate to climate justice, especially in the context of Southeast Asia?

Journeying across the Nepal-Tibet border, the sacred landscape juxtaposed against the reality of border controls draws attention to how this historic pilgrimage route has since evolved into structured nation-state entities. Crossing it sheds important light on the complex undercurrents and intersections of geo-politics, religious tourism, transnational citizenship, transnational mobility but also the multifaceted challenges and far-reaching socio-political, cultural and economic ramifications of delineating territorial spaces.

Cultural heritage is deeply intertwined with politics. As it plays a crucial role in shaping a society's identity, values, and collective memory, no political actors, whether states or non-state actors, can ignore the ‘power’ of heritage. With George Orwell’s famous quote from 1984, "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” in mind, the ways in which cultural heritage is at the center of power struggles, including the ways in which societies come to be ordered in certain ways.

Dr Erica Larson, Research Fellow in the Religion and Globalisation Cluster (Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore) has recently published her book, Ethics of Belonging: Education, Religion, and Politics in Manado, Indonesia (2023). Her book is an important contribution to the literature on pluralism and religious diversity in Indonesia and how local pedagogical efforts are integral towards the creation of a more inclusive society. In this Q&A, we sat down with the author to ask several questions about how she arrived at her research, the opportunities and challenges she faced during her fieldwork in Manado, and her takeaway for Indonesia's religious future.

As the Rohingya crisis unfolds, a multigenerational diasporic identity crisis is also coming to the fore. The enduring statelessness of a people settled in various host states raises important questions about the preservation of their indigenous identity and but also of their integration in a foreign country.

Singapore produces a lot of textile waste but could circularity and artistic relationalities be an alternative paradigm for ameliorating resource depletion while reducing waste generation? A stint at the Renew Earth Sweat Shop might have the answers.

As the SSRTG-funded project “Linking the Digital Humanities to Biodiversity History in Singapore and Southeast Asia” draws to a close, the projects' datasets and online repository have now been made freely available for researchers around the world! The accumulation and presentation of biodiversity data in the form of essays and geospatial mapping lay important groundwork for further research and demonstrate the potential for interdisciplinary collaboration and digital humanities scholarship.