Join the ASEAN Studies Center and the Regional Economic Studies Program at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute for a panel on the current state of play in the US trade policy and its impact on multinational enterprises (MNEs) operating in Southeast Asia as the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs lapses in early July 2025. Featured speakers include Marc Mealy, Isamu Wakamatsu, and Dr. Dan Wang.

Join the Regional Strategic and Political Studies Program at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a talk by Senior Fellow Dr. Ian Storey, who will discuss his new book on Russia’s role in Southeast Asia. Dr. Jittipat Poonkham, Vice Dean for Academic and International Affairs and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Political Science at Thammasat University, will moderate the discussion.

Join the New York Public Library for a talk by acclaimed translator Jeremy Tiang, who will discuss his debut novel State of Emergency. This book is the winner of the Singapore Literature Prize.

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 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 Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University for a talk by Eddy Chong Kwong Mei, Associate Professor of Visual and Performing Arts at Nanyang Technological University, who will discuss the musical fusion of Wang Chenwei, Composer-in-Residence of the Singapore Chinese Orchestra.

Join the the Southeast Asia Initiative at Harvard University Asia Center for a talk by Cheeno Mario M. Sayuno, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and Associate Professor at University of the Philippines Los Baños. Dr. Sayuno will analyze discuss water- and forest-themed children's storybooks from Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia alongside the experiences of long-term expatriates from Southeast Asia, in order to explore how both narratives negotiate concepts of home, belonging, and cultural identity in foreign lands

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 Center for Foreign Policy Studies at Seton Hall University for a discussion with Dr. See Seng Tan, President and CEO of International Students Inc., Research Advisor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Senior Associate at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.  Dr. Tan is the author of 19 books and one of Singapore’s leading experts on foreign affairs. The discussion will focus on Southeast Asia’s engagement with the U.S. during the first Trump administration, and whether engagement with the second Trump administration will differ. Professor Ann Marie Murphy, NYSEAN co-founder, 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 the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) for a panel discussion featuring Iman Pambagyo, former Chief Trade Negotiator for Indonesia; Jayant Menon, Senior Fellow at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute; Yasuyuki Todo, Professor of Economics at Waseda University; Wendy Cutler, ASPI Vice President. These experts from the Indo-Pacific and the U.S. will explore the impact of U.S. friendshoring policy, discussing its challenges, lessons learned, and how it can be enhanced to strengthen supply chains and boost economic prosperity.

Join the Vietnam Studies Programme at ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute for a webinar featuring Vu Minh Khuong, Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Jaya Ratnam, Singapore’s Ambassador to Vietnam; and Tran Phuoc Anh, Vietnam’s Ambassador to Singapore. This panel will explore the evolution of Vietnam-Singapore relations, analyze the opportunities and challenges of their upcoming Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP), and discuss strategies to strengthen and deepen bilateral ties for a more substantive and impactful future.

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.

Join the Regional and Cultural Studies Programme at ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute for a seminar featuring Andar Nubowo, Muhammad Faiz bin Fadzil, and Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib. The panel will be about Islam and the construction of modern national identity in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Join the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University for a conference on the Chinese Diaspora in Southeast Asia. This event brings together papers from scholars of maritime Southeast Asia who document and analyze the diverse but often precarious practices of everyday management of linguistic and cultural identities of diasporic Chinese in the Southeast Asian region.

Join the Southeast Asia Program and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University for a talk by Joshua Babcock, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, who will discuss the raciolinguistic distinctiveness and national identity in Singapore.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for a book talk by Ruth Toulson, Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Faculty Member in the Division of Liberal Arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art. As an anthropologist and trained mortician, Toulson discusses the scope of and resistance to state power over the dead upon the removal of cemeteries in Singapore.

Hosted by the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University, Risa J. Toha, Wake Forest University, will discuss her field research concerning Singapore’s demographic composition and  its implications for ethnic politics, social harmony, and nation-building.

Debbie Fordyce, President of Transient Workers Council Too, and Laavanya Kathiravelu, Associate professor at Nanyang Technological University, will discuss their advocacy and research on migrant worker issues in Singapore. This event is sponsored by Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asia Institute and NYSEAN.

Yu & Me Books will celebrate and amplify Asian literary voices by hosting the upcoming authors Hamid Roslan, Shou Jie Eng, Judy Luo, and Jee Leong Koh. Each author will perform readings from their respective works.

Professor Chua Beng Huat, National University of Singapore, and Dr. Suraya Ismail, University of Cambridge, will discuss the issues that have emerged from the sale and ownership of 99-year leases on public housing units in Singapore. This workshop is hosted by the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

In her groundbreaking book, which re-centers Singapore women in the overlapping discourses of family, home, ecology, and nation, Angelia Poon will focus on the crafts, minds, bodies, and subjectivities of a diverse group of women in a talk organized by the Nanyang Technological University.

Organized by the SOAS Centre of Southeast Asian Studies and SOAS Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme, this lecture by Duyen Nguyen examines the Đồng Dương Buddhist gallery at the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang. She argues that the current display is an attempt to re-contextualize the original landscape of the Đồng Dương monastery and the significance of the Đồng Dương Buddhist art tradition. However, it offers insufficient interpretation due to the absence of some objects that have resulted in a de-contextualized display.

Unraveling the legacies of colonialism is a pertinent question for Singaporeans today. The Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) inherited the “ethnology” collection of the 19th-century Raffles Library and Museum, as well as archaeological material from the Malay World by H. G. Quaritch Wales in the 1930s. Organized by the SOAS Centre of Southeast Asian Studies and SOAS Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme, two ACM curators consider how decoloniality might take shape at the museum and will focus on curatorial and exhibition practices.

In his groundbreaking 1992 exhibition/intervention, artist Fred Wilson extracted materials from the Maryland Historical Society’s collection and curated them as disconcerting displays of historical violence. Taking a cue from Wilson’s intervention, Pamela N. Corey and Vera Mey will discuss case studies from Southeast Asia in which contemporary artists use the museum as a site and medium for decolonial critiques. This lecture is organized by SOAS Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme and the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore.

Singapore has regarded, and continues to do so, the United States as the indispensable power whose global power and reach Singaporeans are seen as invaluable to the stability, security, and prosperity of Asia. This belief was sorely tested during the presidency of Donald Trump and by China’s growing assertiveness in Southeast Asia. The transition to a Biden-led America will unlikely change Singapore’s perspective on and policy toward the US. That said, its view of the US has not meant and does not mean a commitment to take Washington’s side on every international issue and/or dispute the latter might have with other major powers, especially where Singapore’s interests are thought to be at risk.

Transient workers in the Chinese-dominant city-state of Singapore make up an invisibilized underclass of low-paid manual laborers. Numbering some 540,100 in 2019, they make up more than 10 percent of Singapore’s total population, while mostly working and living twenty-four hours per day in the private family homes of their employers.

One of Ho Tzu Nyen’s most prominent works, The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (2017-present) uses image, sound, and text to interrogate the culture which has constructed the notion of “Southeast Asia”– a term given to the region by the US military in World War II despite the eleven countries having no common language, religious or political structure.

Gerald Sim discusses his new book, Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Stability, with documentary filmmaker Tan Pin Pin. It is an interdisciplinary journey through a refreshing set of unique aesthetics from Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.