Join NYSEAN for the book launch of Rightless Resistance: Postcolonial Citizenship, Palm Oil, and Land Grabs in Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2026) by Dr. Ward Berenschot, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Amsterdam.

Join the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) for a panel exploring how Southeast Asia can navigate intensifying U.S.–China competition while advancing its own economic and strategic priorities. Speakers include Gita Wirjawan, former Indonesian Minister of Trade and Honorary Senior Fellow at the Center for China Analysis (CCA), and Amb. Craig Allen, former U.S. Ambassador to Brunei Darussalam and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at CCA. Kevin Zongzhe Li, Fellow at CCA, will moderate the discussion.

Join the UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies for a talk by Beatrice Zani, Associate Research Professor at French National Centre for Scientific Research. Drawing upon more than four years of ethnographic research in Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore, the talk explores the lives of Southeast Asian migrant fishers illustrating how labor takes shape across  shifting maritime environments in which legal authority and accountability are fragmented.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa for a webinar by Dr. Yuan-Hsin Tung and Dr. Ben Fairfield, professors in the Department of Ethnomusicology at UH-Mānoa. They will discuss the current status of the tradition they research and trends of the theatrical and musical forms in Southeast Asia and beyond. Dr. Ricardo D. Trimillos, Emeritus Professor in the department, will moderate the discussion.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University (NIU) for a talk by Richard Pegg, Director and Curator of Asian Art at the MacLean Collection. In this talk, Dr. Pegg will examine maps created during the 17th to 19th centuries in order to better understand complex trade systems in today’s East and South China Seas, such as: the red-seal, Manila, Siam, Fujian, Zheng family, silver-silk, rice-silk, tribute, Muslim, Portuguese, British and Dutch systems.

Join the Harvard University Asia Center for a talk by Dr. Sandersan Onie, Lynch Family Foundation Research Fellow in Global Health Equity at at the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. In this talk, Dr. Onie reflects on a decade of work in Indonesia and other low-resource settings in order to discuss suicide prevention in the country.

Join the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania for a screening of Pesta Babi (Pig Feast) directed by Cypri Dale and Dandhy Laksono. This investigative documentary exposes the human cost of the world’s largest forest-conversion project: 2.5 million hectares of Papua turned into biofuel plantations. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Dr. Rianne Subijanto about the film and the Nusantara podcast series on The Dig.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University (NIU) for a talk by Tomoyuki Shibata, Associate Dean for Research and Administration, College of Health and Human Sciences and Professor of Public Health, NIU; Duhita Mahatmya, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychological and Quantitative Foundations, University of Iowa; Florensia F. Surjadi, Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at NIU, and Riyani, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Learning Innovation, Leadership and Technology, NIU. They will discuss the Indonesian American Family Health Project, which conducts research on Indonesian American family experiences, including strengths, resilience, and health vulnerabilities in order to address health disparities.

Join the Henry Luce Foundation to learn more about the Luce Scholars Program, a 12-month leadership development program that provides immersive, professional experiences in Asia. Designed to deepen mutual understanding and strengthen relationships across borders, the Luce Scholars Program emphasizes experiential learning rather than academic study.

Join Asian CineVision for the NYC premiere of the Indonesian supernatural drama Levitating, a Sundance 2026 selection directed by Wregas Bhanuteja about spiritual possession and fighting against gentrification. The screening will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the director and the opening night reception for the Asian American International Film Festival.

At the AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies, join NYSEAN and SEACAF for a roundtable that will explore the relationship between authoritarianism and threats to academic and intellectual freedom in a way that puts attacks on higher education in the United States in conversation with Southeast Asia. The Roundtable includes the following scholars: Bencharat Sae Chua of the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies at Mahidol University in Thailand; Herlambang Wiratraman of the Research Center of Law and Social Justice at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia; Sol Iglesias of the University of the Philippines-Diliman’s Political Science Department in the Philippines, Sidney Jones of NYSEAN and New York University’s International Affairs Program, and Rianne Subijanto of Baruch College, City University of New York. Margaret Scott, a founder of NYSEAN and a journalist with the New York Review of Books, will chair.

Join the Asia Society Museum for a talk by Danielle Chang, the creator, host, and producer of the Emmy-nominated Outstanding Culinary Series Lucky Chow (PBS). The evening will feature a screening of two episodes as she explores how Asian flavors are transforming European food culture, offering a firsthand look at the chefs and traditions bridging these two worlds.

Join NYSEAN for a talk by Dr. Eve Warburton, visiting fellow at NYU Wagner and research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Change at Australian National University. Dr. Warburton will discuss how Indonesia's declining democracy, weak state capacity, and state-business entanglements, created an ideal environment for fast-paced upstream extraction and large-scale downstream foreign investment.

Join NYSEAN for a roundtable discussion featuring Cindy Anh Nguyễn, Assistant Professor of Information Studies at UCLA; Shaoling Ma, Associate Professor of Asian Studies at Cornell University, and Rianne Subijanto, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. They will discuss how their work makes important interventions in the fields of media, communication, and information studies and reflect on how Southeast Asian studies invigorates these fields, and vice versa. Cindy Kaiying Lin, Assistant Professor of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, will moderate the discussion.

Join Deconstructing Indonesia for an exploration of what Enlightenment means, and who gets to decide what counts as knowledge through a discussion of l’Encyclopedie, the Cartesian method, and Edward Said’s landmark text, Orientalism.

Join NYSEAN and the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences for a symposium bringing together scholars and conservationists from across disciplines—including history, anthropology, conservation biology, and psychology—to explore new interdisciplinary approaches to promoting coexistence between humans and the endangered Asian elephant. This symposium is organized by Dr. Joshua Plotnik, Associate Professor of Psychology at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center, and Dr. Bradley Camp Davis, Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University.

Join Deconstructing Indonesia and The Coretanist for a discussion on modern refrigeration, compulsory kneeling, and why a student-led group that organizes classes on Indonesian history called “Deconstructing Indonesia” will be spending the next several months focusing on Europe.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UH Mānoa) for a webinar exploring how Southeast Asian borderlands live, negotiate, and challenge national boundaries. Speakers include Gading Gumilang Putra, National Information Advocacy Officer, Jesuit Refugee Services Indonesia; Lian Bawi Thang, Political Science PhD Candidate, UH Mānoa, and Prista Ratanapruck, Chiangmai University in Thailand and Singapore University of Social Science, Singapore. Ariel Mota Alves, Political Science PhD Candidate at UH Mānoa, will moderate the discussion.

Join Deconstructing Indonesia, NYSEAN, and the Indonesia Film Forum New York for a screening of Pesta Babi (Pig Feast) directed by Cypri Dale and Dandhy Laksono. This investigative documentary exposes the human cost of the world’s largest forest-conversion project: 2.5 million hectares of Papua turned into biofuel plantations. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Cypri Dale and representatives of the Malind Indigenous Community about the Red Cross Movement and resistance on the frontlines.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Michigan for a talk by Chris Hulshof, GETSEA Director of Community Engagement and History PhD Candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Hulshof will discuss how the British psychological warfare campaign in Indonesia not only flooded the Indonesian market with black propaganda leaflets and radio broadcasts, but deftly manipulated the international news circuit to spread Indonesian Army propaganda across the globe.

Join the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU for a talk by Dr. Anissa Rahadiningtyas, curator of Islamic Aesthetics in Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asia at the National Gallery Singapore. This presentation aims to rethink the established categorical boundaries of Islamic art through the works of Arahmaiani (b. 1961, Indonesia), Shooshie Sulaiman (b. 1973, Malaysia), and Zarina Muhammad (b. 1982, Singapore).