Join New York City Council Speaker Adrienne E. Adams and fellow Council Members for a vibrant celebration of Songkran (Thai New Year) and Thingyan (Burmese New Year). These joyous holidays, traditionally observed in mid-April, are renowned for their water festivals symbolizing renewal and fresh beginnings.

Please RSVP by Friday, April 25, 2025.

Join Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, Apicha Community Health Center, OCA-NY, and Thai Community USA-NYC in celebrating the 2025 Songkran Festival. Come together to welcome the Thai New Year and honor Queens’ vibrant Southeast Asian communities with an evening of cultural performances, delicious food, and more.

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 Hunter College - CUNY, and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (AASC) for an exclusive preview of Foundations & Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook with Dr. Karen Umemoto, UCLA AASC Director. An unprecedented resource featuring 50 unique chapters and 250+ corresponding lesson plans, Foundations and Futures will be the most comprehensive collection of Asian American and Pacific Islanders available for free and online for high school, college, and lifelong learners.

Join NYU Silver School of Social Work and Sulo: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU for a talk by Bianca Mabute-Louie, PhD student in Sociology at Rice University, who will discuss her book on Asian American political identity and community building.

Join the Asian American Education Project, the Wisconsin Council for Social Studies, the Wisconsin Historical Society, and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction for a workshop facilitated by Dr. Kaila Vue, scholar of Teaching and Learning. This workshop delves into the complex history, life stories, and resilience of Hmong Americans in Wisconsin, and offers teaching resources on this community.

Join the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University for a talk by Benjamin Tausig, Associate Professor of Critical Music Studies at SUNY-Stony Brook University, who will discuss his forthcoming book on Maurice Rocco, a queer Black American jazz pianist murdered in 1976 Bangkok. The talk explores how Rocco’s life and death reflect profound shifts in the definitions and valuations of race, sex, and gender identity in Cold War-era Thailand.

Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for a talk by Mai Der Vang, recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and professor of Creative Writing at Fresno State University, who will discuss her new poetry book on the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities. Topics covered by Mai Der Vang include the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam, the lives of refugees afterward, and the postmemory carried by their descendants. Cambodian American poet and instructor at Barnard College Monica Sok will moderate the discussion.

Join NYSEAN and Sulo for a talk by Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, who will discuss her new book. In Caring for Caregivers, Dr. Francisco-Menchavez centers the perspectives of Filipino caregivers in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2013 to 2021, illuminating their transnational experiences and the strategies and practices they employ to help each other navigate the crumbling US healthcare system.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University for a talk by Micah Morton, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, who will discuss his book on the Indigenous Akha community’s work to decolonize and reclaim their collective ancestral identity.

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 Mahindra Humanities Center and the Southeast Asia Initiative at Harvard University for a talk by Catherine H. Nguyen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College, who will discuss the longue durée of Western imperialism from French colonial Indochina to the American War in Vietnam through a comparative study of the writings of Vietnamese mixed-race authors Kim Lefèvre and Kien Nguyen.

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 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 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 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 the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University for a talk by Karla Findley, Independent Researcher for the Karen Refugee Project, who will discuss Karen refugees’ experiences in the greater Chicago area.

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 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 the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a talk by Elissa “E” Domingo Badiqué, PhD candidate in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, who will discuss Filipinx mimicry and queer self-fashioning through dance.

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 Asian American / Asian Research Institute at CUNY for a talk by Cherry Lou Sy, Adjunct Lecturer in the English and American Studies Departments at Brooklyn College, CUNY.  Sy’s debut novel Love Can’t Feed You (Dutton, 2024) is a heartfelt and poignant exploration of love, sacrifice, and survival in the face of adversity. It follows the journey of a young immigrant woman from the Philippines  navigating the complexities of a challenging relationship while grappling with the harsh realities of her life.

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 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 talk by Taomo Zhou, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore, on the life and legacy of Francisca Casparina Fanggidaej (1925–2013)—a left-wing Indonesian activist in the Afro-Asian movements, a mother of seven, and a woman who endured decades of forced separation from her family. Through Fanggidaej’s story, Taomo explores how Indonesia and China shaped notions of motherhood and how a transnational figure like Fanggidaej navigated her role within revolutionary anticolonialism in Indonesia, state socialism in China, and the global shift toward capitalist neoliberalism—ultimately displacing the Third World internationalist vision both nations once championed. The discussion will be moderated by Rianne Subijanto, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Baruch College, CUNY.

Join the Myanmar Research Centre at Australian National University for a talk by Phyo Win Latt, independent scholar and journalist, who will discuss the evolution of Bamar identity over time and explore its role in the ongoing debate regarding establishing a Bamar state as a necessary solution to Myanmar’s protracted civil war.