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 the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) for a talk by Caixia Mao, PhD candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University and NYSEAN member. This presentation will explore the politics of China and Japan funding the Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway (HSR) project in Indonesia.

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 Ron Deibert, cybersecurity expert and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, and Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, for a discussion of the rise of digital authoritarianism and the fight for our democratic freedoms. The discussion will be informed by Deibert’s just-released book, Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy. Professor Sheila Coronel, director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, will introduce and moderate the discussion.

This event is co-sponsored by NYSEAN, the NYU Democracy Project, the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, Knight First Amendment Institute, Brown Institute for Media Innovation, the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization, and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Join the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) for a talk by Dr. Mai Van Tran, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Brussels School of Governance of Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Dr. Tran will discuss the extent to which the algorithmic curation, moderation, and design by social media platforms might facilitate cross-platform authoritarian repression, with evidence from conflict-ridden Myanmar. Dr. John Sidel, Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE, will moderate the discussion.

Join the Southeast Asia Program and the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University for a talk by Joshua Mitchell, PhD Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology, who will discuss how addiction, rehabilitation, and war perpetuate endless cycles of conflict among Myanmar’s forever soldiers and their disillusionment with revolution.

Join the Stimson Center for a talk by insurgency expert Zachary Abuza and Indo-Pacific security scholar Nyein Nyein Thant Aung to discuss their recent issue brief examining Chinese military aid to the Myanmar junta.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies ath the University of Michigan for a talk by Lwin Moe, PhD Candidate in Computer Science at York University Lassonde School of Engineering, who will discuss the creation of datasets and tools for fact checking in Burmese and other low resource languages to combat misinformation online.

Join the Center for Intercultural Engagement and Support, the Center for Ethics and Public Engagement, and the History Department at Luther College for a talk by Jeffrey Wassertorm, who will discuss how youth activism in Asia has evolved, transnationalizing their common struggles and aspirations, and forging solidarity from the late 2010s to the present.

Join the NYU MA Program in International Relations and NYSEAN for a talk by Professor Michael Oppenheimer and Dr. Hendrik Ohnesorge, who will discuss U.S. soft power and its future during the Trump administration. Please RSVP by Monday, April 14.

Join the Indonesia Studies Program at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a panel featuring Elyssa Ludher, Visiting Fellow and food security researcher and urban planner; Marihot Nasution, State Budget Analyst in the Secretariat General of Indonesia’s House of Representatives (DPR), and Adriana Viola Miranda, MD, Program Director of 1000 Days Fund. These experts will discuss President Prabowo Subianto’s plan to feed Indonesia’s schoolchildren and pregnant mothers, including issues such as the meals’ nutritional value, governance, and fiscal and social sustainability.

Join NYSEAN for a talk by Rianne Subijanto, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College, City University of New York. Her book, Communication against Capital: Red Enlightenment at the Dawn of Indonesia, tells a story of the processes through which ordinary people mobilized an anticolonial communist resistance against Dutch rule through the production of revolutionary communication in the 1920s. NYSEAN co-founder Margaret Scott will moderate the discussion. 

Join the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University for a talk by Bilahari Kausikan, Former Ambassador-at-Large in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore, who will discuss ASEAN’s post-Cold War evolution and its relations with Russia and China.

Join the ASEAN Studies Center at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for an e-Launch and discussion on The State of Southeast Asia: 2025 Survey Report. Michael Jonathan Green, Liu Lin, Peter Varghese, and Yenny Zannuba Wahid will discuss some of the report’s significant findings on the prevailing attitudes of Southeast Asians on regional political, economic, and social issues. Sharon Seah, Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the ASEAN Studies Centre, will present the key findings of the survey report, and Choi Shing Kwok, Director and CEO of the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, will moderate the discussion.

Join the Center for Humanities at UW-Madison for a panel featuring Tuong Vu (Vietnam in the World Project), Chien-Kai Chen (Conference Group on Taiwan Studies), and Stan Hok-wui Wong and Maggie Shum (Global Research Association of Politics in Hong Kong). They will reflect on what it means to advance “PUBLIC Asian American Studies,” how to uplift subaltern voices and diasporas, their challenges and risks, and communities of solidarity.

Join NYSEAN, SUNY/CUNY SEAC, and GETSEA for a screening of Hot Stuff: Exposure of Indonesia's Geothermal Dreams, an AIFIS award-winning documentary and part of a trio of Indonesian films that delve into energy policies in Indonesia, corporate ties to those policies, and their detrimental effects on local environments and populations. Director Dandhy Laksono and Producer Cypri Dale will join us live from the University of Michigan’s Center for Southeast Asia Studies as over 20 universities from across North America connect to watch Hot Stuff simultaneously, followed by a discussion about the film, energy policy in Indonesia, and the new Prabowo Subianto administration’s response to local grassroots movements in the country.

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 NYSEAN and Sulo: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU for the book launch of Global Battlefields, a memoir by Walden Bello. Bello, a Filipino activist and intellectual, holds a PhD in sociology from Princeton. He was an anti-Vietnam War activist, a pro-democracy activist against the Marcos dictatorship, a member of Congress, a Vice-Presidential candidate, and a university professor.

Join the Philippines Institute at Australian National University for an online forum on the arrest of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and its implications. The panel features Manuel Quezon III, political analyst and columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer; Atty. Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, Senior Professional Lecturer, De La Salle University; Mags Maglana, governance, peace and development worker; and is moderated by Dr. Cleo Calimbahin, ANU Philippines Institute Senior Research Fellow and Professor at De la Salle University-Manila.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the Department of Political Science at Northern Illinois University for a talk by Ernest Plange Kwofie, PhD student in Political Science at NIU, who will explore pressing issues of governance and emerging security challenges within ASEAN.

Join the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a talk by Kim Aris, son of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who will discuss Myanmar’s ongoing crisis. This event is an opportunity to come together, hear firsthand about Kim's mission and explore ways we can take action to support the people of Myanmar together.

Join the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a talk by Dr. Kristian Saguin, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of the Philippines Diliman, who will discuss urbanization and resource flows in Metro Manila.

Join the Malaysia Studies Programme at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute for a webinar on Patakan Harapan (the Alliance of Hope), featuring Wong Shu Qi, DAP Member of Parliament for Kluang, Johor; and Sim Tze Tzin, PKR Member of Parliament for Bayan Baru, Penang. They will discuss ongoing efforts within Patakan Harapan’s leading parties, drawing on their extensive experience in state legislatures and federal parliament, and various positions they have held in cabinet, parliamentary committees, and government agencies.

Join SUNY/CUNY SEAC and the Southeast Asia Program at Stanford University for a webinar featuring Scot Marciel, Alice Ba, Kyaw Htet Aung, and Su Mon Thazin Aung. Moderated by Meredith Weiss, this panel discussion will discuss the context behind USAID and US foreign aid in Myanmar along with the nature and implications of the abrupt change in US policy.