Join the Center for Khmer Studies for the official book launch of the Khmer edition of Svay: A Khmer Village in Cambodia, the seminal ethnography by the late May Mayko Ebihara. The program will include brief remarks from scholars who contributed to its translation and publication. Panelists include Professor Judy Ledgerwood, Dr. Chhom Kunthea, Linna Sophea, and Dr. Eve Zucker. Professor Andrew Mertha will moderate the discussion.

Join Kew and Willow Books to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month with a lineup of amazing authors, who will read from their most recent works. Featured speakers include Cambodian American poet Chenda Bao, Chamoru writer Francisco Delgado, and multi-genre writer Taiyo Na.

Join the Center for Khmer Studies for a talk by Dr. Lawrence Chua, Associate Professor of Architecture at Syracuse University and CKS Research Fellow, who will discuss the conjoined genealogies of the Musée Albert Sarraut (Phnom Penh, 1920) and the National Museum of Bangkok (1927).

Join the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre’s annual Southeast Asia Forum in 2025, which brings together leading specialists worldwide to discuss the implications of global trends and ongoing geoeconomic contestation for Southeast Asian economies, polities, and societies. Featured speakers include Evelyn Goh (Australian National University), Henry Wai-chung Yeung (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), Selina Ho (National University of Singapore), and Alvin Camba (Association of Universities, Inc.).

Join PEN America for a webinar on the Cambodia-America rock opera Where Elephants Weep and human rights issues surrounding the Khmer Rouge regime. Panelists include Catherine Filloux, award-winning French Algerian American playwright, renowned composer Him Sophy, and performer and policy analyst Amara Goel. Executive Director of the Artists at Risk Connection Julie Trébault will moderate the conversation.

Join ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute for a talk by Dr. John Lee, senior fellow at Hudson Institute, for a talk on Trump’s policies and their far-reaching global consequences. He will explore their impact on the US Indo-Pacific strategy and security alliances in Asia, the potential for strategic realignments among Asian nations, and how countries can navigate the uncertainties and challenges in the turbulent years ahead.

Join the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a talk by Andrew Mertha,  the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies, Director of the China Studies Program, and Director of the SAIS China Research Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Dr. Mertha will discuss his new book on the Khmer Rouge, revolution, and leadership struggles.

Join Sciences Po International Research Center for “Whispers to the Ancestors,” an immersive performance by artist XM Tran. This collective commemoration of 50 years of exile brings together voices, memories, and wishes from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, North America, and Europe.

Join the Columbia University School of Journalism, the Alliance Program, Sciences Po American Foundation, and Sciences Po Centre de Recherches Internationales for a transatlantic dialogue bringing together the voices of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian exiles in France and the United States, as well as experts, activists, and artists from both sides of the Atlantic. Featured speakers include Ombeline Bois, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hélène Le Bail, Khatharya Um, Fabien Truong, Kalyanee Mam, and Krysada Phounsiri.

Join the Center for Khmer Studies for a talk by Derek Richardson, PhD Candidate in Sociology at Indiana University Bloomington, who will discuss his ethnography of three NGOs in Cambodia that provide healthcare services and rely on foreign volunteer healthcare professionals to assist with treating patients and training local staff. Sokro Suong, PhD student at National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilization (INALCO) and Executive Director of Yosothor, will moderate the discussion.

Join NYSEAN, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the Columbia-Harvard China and the World program for a conference featuring Walden Bello, Pongphisoot Busbarat, Thomas Christensen, Sophal Ear, Joseph Chinyong Liow, Derek Mitchell, Ann Marie Murphy, Hong Hai Nguyen, Lien-Hang Nguyen, Elina Noor, Praslhant Parameswaran, Gregory Poling, Yohanes Sulaiman, and Ayumi Teraoka. These leading experts will examine the implications of a second Trump administration for US-Southeast Asian relations at this critical junction in global politics.

Join Thirdworld Newsreel and the Documentary Forum at City College of New York for an Indie-Lens Pop-Up screening and discussion of the documentary film Home Court, directed by Erica Tanamachi, ahead of its airdate (March 24, 2025) on PBS. The director will be joined by the producers of the film, Jenn Lee Smith and Brandon Soun. Home Court is the coming-of-age story of Ashley Chea, a Cambodian American basketball prodigy in Southern California whose life intensifies as recruitment heats up. As she overcomes injury as well as racial and class differences between her home and private school worlds and against rival schools, Ashley strives to become her own person and leave a legacy behind.

Join NYSEAN for a book talk by Merlyna Lim, Canada Research Chair in Digital Media and Global Network Society, Professor of Communication and Media Studies, and Director of the ALiGN Media Lab at Carleton University. Social Media and Politics in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2025) highlights the dual role of social media in both fostering grassroots activism and enabling autocratic practices of algorithmic politics, notably in electoral politics.

The Center for Khmer Studies (CKS) and NYSEAN invite you to a panel discussion on the book Cambodia’s Trials: Contrasting Visions of Truth, Transitional Justice and National Recovery (University of Chicago Press, 2024), which examines Cambodia’s journey of justice and recovery more than 40 years after the Khmer Rouge genocide. The panel features the book’s editors and contributors: Robin Biddulph, Alexandra Kent, Courtney Work, Pádraig McAuliffe, and Eve Zucker, CKS President and NYSEAN Executive Board Member, who will also serve as the session’s moderator.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at University of Hawaii-Manoa for a panel featuring Thanet Aphornsuvan, Parker Novak, Sam Seun, and Dominggus Elcid Li. Moderated by Meredith Weiss, this webinar will discuss key issues related to recent and forthcoming elections in Southeast Asia.

Join the Center for Khmer Studies for a workshop by Sivpheng Haing, a Lecturer in the Educational Studies Department of the Faculty of Education at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). This workshop offers instruction on the basics of academic writing to Cambodian students and researchers.

Join the Columbia Society of International Law and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University for a film screening of Daze of Justice: A Documentary Film by Michael Siv in collaboration with Dr. Leakhena Nou, medical sociologist and Professor of Sociology at California State University-Long Beach. This documentary follows Dr. Nou’s research on Cambodian American women and their journeys to resurrect the memory of their loved ones before the UN Special Tribunal prosecuting the Khmer Rouge.

Join the Columbia Society of International Law and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University for a talk by Dr. Leakhena Nou, medical sociologist and Professor of Sociology at California State University-Long Beach, who will share her approach to empowering Khmer Rouge survivors to share their testimonies at the UN-supported Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Hosted by Asia Society, Phloeun Prim, Executive Director of Cambodian Living Arts and New York City-based Cambodian poet Sokunthary Svay will join Elena Park, Joe Melillo, and Karen Brooks Hopkins to reflect on how Cambodia’s the cultural landscape has been transformed in the years following the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime.

The Roosevelt House Human Rights Program will screen the film Ghost Mountain, which tells the story of a Cambodian refugee who made his way to Connecticut in 1980 after surviving the Killing Fields. This event is sponsored by Network 20/20, the Hunter College Asian American Studies Program and the History Department.

Hosted by the NYU Center for Media, Culture, and History, author Deirdre Boyle and scholar/filmmaker Jill Godmilow will discuss the book, Ferryman of Memories: The Films of Rithy Panh, which follows the story of award-winning filmmaker Rithy Panh, a survivor of the Cambodian genocide who moved to France.

Hosted by the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, Trent Walker, author of Until Nirvana’s Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia, will discuss the aesthetic and affective dimensions of the four primary types of sung Buddhist poems in Cambodia: retellings of the Buddha's life, expressions of filial gratitude, meditations on the process of dying, and aspirations for future bliss.

Hosted by the Center for Khmer Studies, Samedy Suong, CKS Deputy Director, will introduce CKS programs and other CKS-related activities. CKS Head Librarian, Sivleng Chhor, will discuss what is available and how to access CKS library collections. Eve Zucker, CKS President and WEAI Adjunct Research Scholar, will introduce the speakers.

Hosted by the Center for Khmer Studies, Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam, a medical anthropologist and ethnobotanist, will explore the different relationalities and rationalities expressed by groups living in Siem Reap Province for treating COVID-19 symptoms with either biomedicine, traditional, and/or folk medicine.

Sopheak Chhan, Royal University of Phnom Penh, will consider how the impacts of hydropower dams across the Mekong River have intensified long-term land and resource struggles in Cambodia. This event is sponsored by the UHM Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the East-West Center.

Randle DeFalco, University of Hawaii at Manoa, will provide an overview of the work of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) also known as the “Khmer Rouge Tribunal.” This event is sponsored by the UHM Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the William S. Richardson School of Law Pacific/Asian Legal Studies.

Hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University, Jeremy Ladd, Cornell University, will discuss the role repression of opposition parties plays in increasing support for the opposition party in hybrid regimes using the Cambodia National Rescue Party as a case study.

Dr. Carl Grundy-Warr, National University of Singapore, Dr. Walker DePuy, Cornell University, Armand Camhol, Chengchi University, and Ek Sovanna, Kratie Representative of the Prey Lang Community Network in Cambodia, will discuss the role of local communities in the development paradigm. This event is hosted by the University of Hawaii Center for Southeast Asia Studies.

Dr. Ian G. Baird, University of Wisconsin-Madison, will discuss how upstream hydropower dams in China and Laos are destroying the Ramsar wetland in Cambodia. This event is hosted by the Center for Khmer Studies and will be moderated by NYSEAN Executive Committee member, Eve Zucker.

Hosted by the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association, Sokunthary Svay, a Khmer writer from the Bronx, will lead a writing workshop on how to find one’s voice and engage readers.