Call for Papers - Against the Tide: Agency in Volatile Times for Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia Council (SEAC) — Rising Voices in Southeast Asian Studies
Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference 2026 (AAS2026 @ Vancouver)
Submission deadline: July 20, 2025
The Southeast Asia Council (SEAC) of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) is calling for paper proposals from up-and-coming scholars to join a Rising Voices panel on the topic of “Against the Tide: Agency in Volatile Times for Southeast Asia.” We seek to recruit early career scholars, or “rising voices,” including graduate students, independent scholars, and untenured faculty, with preference for those based at underfunded institutions from Southeast Asian countries (see below for eligibility). Accepted paper proposals will form a panel for presentation and inclusion in the 2026 Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from March 12-15, 2026. SEAC will provide partial financial assistance for presenters to attend the annual conference and meetings. In addition to receiving financial support from the AAS/SEAC, this year’s Rising Voices Panel also has financial support provided by TRaNS: Trans- Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia.
Panel Topic Description
In the midst of volatile conditions of geopolitical power, important questions have arisen regarding the place of agency in Southeast Asia and beyond. This panel invites papers that examine how states, societies, and individuals in Southeast Asia address, navigate, and effect change against seemingly insuperable economic, political, and neoliberal forces. This includes digital terrains of datafication and surveillance, censorship and disinformation. What are the ways in which dynamics of change within Southeast Asia intersect with or push against global tides? To what extent can reclamations of Southeast Asian history challenge and revise the placement of Southeast Asia in dominant accounts of wars and conflicts, colonialism and neo colonialism? How do social formations within Southeast Asia address enduring forces of empire, state power and human rights, authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism, as these forces shape and constrain the region’s future? We welcome contributions from all methodologies and disciplines across the social sciences and the humanities, with preferences for interdisciplinary and intersectional work that shed new theoretical and empirical light — historical and contemporary — on Southeast Asia. Proposals can focus on specific sites or comparisons within Southeast Asia, across the region and its diaspora, or Southeast Asia ties to other regions and global currents.
Eligibility and Selection Criteria
We seek papers by Southeast Asian scholars who are early career scholars, or “rising voices.” Rising voices are defined here as advanced graduate students (currently writing dissertations based on original field or archival research) or untenured faculty members (including tenure track assistant professors, adjuncts, and lecturers, or the approximate equivalent based on the academic tradition from which the scholar is coming). Applicants may be currently enrolled as students in, or employed by, any institution of higher education in the world. Preference may be given to students or faculty currently based at underfunded institutions in Late Developing Countries (LDC) in Southeast Asia. Please note that the definition of LDC used by the AAS excludes the following Asian countries: Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of China (Taiwan), Republic of Korea (South Korea), and Singapore.
In addition to the stated goal of supporting rising voices from Southeast Asia, the primary criteria for selection will be the quality and cohesiveness of the proposals to form a viable panel. Most importantly, the Rising Voices panel is intended to be a Southeast Asia-focused panel. Submissions that do not substantively address issues pertaining to the region will not be considered.
Please note that neither published papers nor papers under review can be accepted to Rising Voices. Moreover, scholars may not submit the same paper proposal to both Rising Voices and the JSEAS-sponsored panels. The selected panelists will be expected to attend the conference in person and comply with the deadline for paper submissions.
To submit a paper proposal, please provide the following items in the order listed below, all within a SINGLE Microsoft Word file or PDF document, by July 20, 2025:
Applicant’s Name, affiliation, and contact information, clearly indicating applicant’s current country of residence.
Paper abstract. 250 words in the format of the standard AAS paper proposal.
Brief bio-sketch of 200-300 words describing current and recent scholarly positions, a brief sentence or two about current research, and any significant publications. The model for this should be the standard blurb one sees on a faculty or graduate student website.
Current curriculum vitae. Maximum 4 pages
Please save the file with the following filename convention:
RisingVoices2026_ApplicantsFamilyName.pdf
Completed applications should be sent to the attention of the AAS Rising Voices 2026 committee at aasrisingvoices@gmail.com by the July 20, 2025 deadline. Late submissions or submissions that do not follow the above instructions will not be considered. Applicants should confirm in their email that their paper has not been published or submitted for review elsewhere.
