Join the Stimson Center for a talk by Aye Lei Tun, PhD Candidate in Political Science at McMaster University. As an expert on Myanmar’s pro-democracy civil society organizations (CSOs), Aye Lei Tun will delve into the complexities of how CSOs are strategizing for survival amid pressures by the ruling junta, with new research tracking the latest developments in Myanmar’s civil society.

Join the Indonesia Institute at Australian National University (ANU) for their annual Human Rights Day panel, which brings together experts with deep knowledge of the historical evolutions of human rights activism and protections, from independence to the present day. Speakers include: Sidney Jones (NYSEAN and NYU), Dede Oetemo (GAYa NUSANTARA Foundation), Usman Hamid (Amnesty International Indonesia), and Robert Cribb (ANU). Dyah Ayu Kartika, PhD candidate in the Department of Political and Social Change at ANU, will moderate the discussion.

Join the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a talk by Kevin D. Pham, Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. Dr. Pham will discuss how revolutionaries in Vietnam debated the value of free speech. Drawing on the writings of the Nhân Văn-Giai Phẩm (NVGP), a movement of intellectuals who proclaimed support for free speech and communist revolution in North Vietnam in the late 1950s, Pham shows how the NVGP defend free speech as a collective right, rather than an individual one, and as something that can invigorate the Party so that it can more effectively guide the people towards socialism.

Join the Philippines Institute at Australian National University for a talk by Dr. Queenie Tomaro, visiting fellow of the ANU Philippines Institute and a faculty at the Department of Political Science, Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology. This seminar examines how women engaged in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) perceive and navigate the convergence of Women, Peace and Security and P/CVE agendas.

Join the Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages, the York Centre for Asian Research, the Philippines Study Group, and York International at York University for the virtual book launch of Indigeneity in the Philippines: Studies on Knowledge, Identity, and Rights. The following book contributors will be in attendance: Oona Paredes, Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA; Ruth Tindaan, Associate Professor of English at the University of the Philippines - Baguio; and Maria Cecilia Medina, Associate Professor at the Asian Center of the University of the Philippines - Baguio.

Join NYSEAN and GETSEA for a screening of Vietnamerica , a documentary that follows Master Nguyen Hoa as he returns to former refugee camps in Southeast Asia after three decades abroad to search for the graves of his wife and two children. The screening is followed by a discussion with Executive Producer Nancy Bui of the Vietnamese Heritage Foundation.

Join York University’s Canadian Southeast Asian Studies Initiative Research Colloquium 2025–26 for their inaugural event featuring Irene Poetranto, Course Instructor of Contemporary Asian Studies and PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, who will discuss the impact of Indonesia’s changing internet landscape on dissent, civic discourse, and the pursuit of democratic reform.

Join the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a talk by Dr. Kyaw Yin Hlaing, Visiting Senior Fellow at the Myanmar Studies Program at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute and a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University, who will discuss the core participants in Myanmar’s 2025 election as well as the role of supporting actors.

Join the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a seminar exploring the evolution of Thailand’s middle-power aspiration, its recurring retreat into small-power conduct, and how this oscillation is shaped by domestic political instability, bureaucratic inertia, and strategic uncertainty. This panel features speakers from Thammasat University’s Faculty of Political Science, including: Dr. Jittipat Poonkham, Associate Dean for Academic and International Affairs, Director of International Studies Program, and Associate Professor of International Relations; Dr. Fuadi Pitsuwan, lecturer in International Relations; and Dr. Pongkwan Sawasdipakdi, lecturer in International Relations and Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies.

Join NYSEAN for a screening of Breaking the Cycle , a documentary about a group of young politicians campaigning against an authoritarian constitution in Thailand. The screening is followed by a discussion with Kunthida Rungruengkiat, a former Member of Parliament and Deputy Leader of the Future Forward Party in Thailand, and a current MPP candidate at the Princeton School of Public Policy and International Affairs.

Join the ISEAS Yusof-Ishak Institution for a seminar by Dr. Duncan McCargo, NYSEAN Co-Founder, Associate Senior Fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, and President’s Chair in Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dr. McCargo will discuss the Thai Senate’s selection process, a theoretically non-political process that has become overshadowed by the presence of political parties.

Join NYSEAN and Princeton Thaigers for a talk by Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, a Thai politician and businessman who has served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the People's Party since 2024.

Join NYSEAN and the Southeast Asia Coalition for Academic Freedom (SEACAF) for a conference examining attacks on intellectual and academic freedom in Southeast Asia and the United States. Scholars, journalists, and activists will gather to look at how universities and intellectuals often become the first target of rising authoritarianism, the costs and benefits of collective action, and the strategies for resistance. The conversation will address the impact of funding cuts, strengthened immigration enforcement, and assaults on higher education in the United States as well as the lessons learned from crackdowns in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Turkey.

Join NYSEAN and Nicholas Kuipers, Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University, as he discusses his recently published book. Drawing on large-scale surveys, experiments, and archival documents, States Against Nations provides a thought-provoking perspective on the challenges of bureaucratic recruitment and unearths an overlooked tension between state- and nation-building.

Join the Asian American Resource Center, the Center for Burma Studies, and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University for a talk by Elizabeth Rhoads, Senior Lecturer at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University, Sweden. Professor Rhoads will discuss the influence of conflict and displacement on statelessness and barriers to acquiring and holding citizenship in Myanmar.

Join NYSEAN, the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, and the U.S. Immigration & Resettlement Directive for a Forum on Burmese Democracy, where leading voices will share their perspectives on the crisis. Sean Turnell, Tom Andrews, Miemie Winn Byrd, and Kim Aris will examine Myanmar’s current trajectory, the challenges to democratic recovery, and the role of international engagement and diaspora communities.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison for a talk by Christina Schwenkel, Professor of Anthropology at UC Riverside. Looking back on the early months of the pandemic in Vietnam, the talk argues for greater attention to the sensory dimensions of public health security, particularly as experienced through sonic rupture.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa for a talk by Dr. Muhammad Suhail Mohamed Yazid, Fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center, as he discusses his latest book He Who is Made Lord. Dr. Barbara Watson Andaya, Emerita Professor of Asian Studies at UH-Mānoa, will moderate the discussion.

Join NYSEAN and NYU MAIR for a talk by Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Benjamin Tausig about the way that music features in their new books and how they engage with songs in their various writings. Benjamin will give a brief introduction to his latest book, Bangkok After Dark. Jeffrey will then discuss a chapter in his new book, The Milk Tea Alliance.

Margaret Scott, NYSEAN co-founder, will moderate the discussion.

Join Deconstructing Indonesia, a student-led group, for a discussion of the National Revolution of Indonesia with a focus on the clashing writings of two giants of the revolution: Sutan Sjahrir and Tan Malaka.

Join ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s Media, Technology, and Society Program (MTS) for a talk by Dr. Carol Soon, Associate Professor of Communications and New Media in the National University of Singapore, and Dr. Maria Monica Wihardja, Visiting Fellow and Co-Coordinator of the MTS Program.. They will discuss the role of different types of media, AI- and non-AI-generated disinformation and election propaganda on voter perceptions and behaviours in Indonesia’s 2024 Presidential Election and Singapore’s 2025 General Election.

Join the Thailand Studies Program at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a talk by Dr. Puangthong R. Pawakapan, Professor of International Relations at Chulalongkorn University, and Supalak Ganjanakhundee, advisor to the Military Affairs Committee of Thailand’s House of Representatives. They will discuss potential solutions for addressing the Thailand-Cambodia conflict.

Join NYSEAN and NYU MAIR for a talk by Dr. Eve Warburton, research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Change at Australian National University (ANU) and Director of the ANU Indonesia Project. Dr. Warburton will discuss her new paper co-written with Dr. Andi Ali Armunanto on the motivations of businesspeople to enter politics in Indonesia.

Join the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University for a talk by Dr. Alyssa Paredes, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. This talk uses the pejorative Filipino expression naka-aircon or “air-conditioned person” meaning detached from reality, to capture class-based inequalities in access to cooled spaces to argue that the indifference of the elite bears repercussions for the delivery of the law.

Join the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University for a talk by Dr. Wei-Ting Yen, assistant research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Dr. Yen examines how South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore adopted distinct medical resource strategies during the early phase of COVID-19.

Join NYSEAN and the Program in International Relations (IR) at New York University for a talk by Dr. Jürgen Haacke, Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, who will discuss changes in foreign policy entrepreneurship in U.S. policy toward Myanmar in the 2000s. Dr. Frances O’Morchoe, Visiting Assistant Professor in International History with the IR Program at New York University, will moderate the discussion.

Join the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a talk by Bradley Simpson, Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Connecticut, who will discuss Indonesian politics and policies surrounding the New International Economic Order.

Join ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a panel examining Thai and Indonesian youth’s perceptions on wellbeing and development, social attitudes and values, and other trends in civic engagement. Featured speakers include Voradon Lerdrat, Director of Research and Policy Partnerships at 101 Public Policy Think Tank (Thailand), and Dr. Iim Halimatusa’diyah, Visiting Senior Fellow at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute and Professor of Sociology at Islamic State University (UIN) Syarif Hidayatullah.