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 Engage Thailand for a talk by Anchana Heemmina, a human rights defender and the founder of the Duay Jai Group, an organization that provides rehabilitation services for torture victims in Thailand and support for their families. Anchana will discuss her experience working on human rights in Thailand's Deep South, including the current legal context, lessons learned, and pathways to peace. The conversation will be conducted in Thai, with live English interpretation.

Join the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a panel exploring Chinese migration to 20th-century Malaya and contemporary Singapore. Panelists include Zach Howlett, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at National University of Singapore; Wen Li Thian, PhD student at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations; and Darren Wan, History PhD student at Cornell. Shaoling Ma, Associate Professor of Asian Studies, will moderate the panel.

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 Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale for a talk by Michele Thompson, Professor of History at Southern Connecticut State University and NYSEAN Member. Dr. Thompson will share an overview of the Vietnamese Buddhist involvement in health care and the changes in Vietnam that resulted in a resurgence of Buddhist political and medical activity, culminating in the Buddhist protests of the 1960s.

Join the Indonesia Project at ANU Crawford School of Public Policy for a talk by Dr. Andini Pramono, who will discuss the economic and environmental impacts of Commercial Milk Formula (CMF) in Indonesia, revealing substantial economic loss when CMF displaces breastmilk in Indonesia.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University (NIU) for a talk by Jui-Ching Wang, Professor of Music Education and World Music at NIU’s School of Music. Professor Wang will discuss a project called “Performing Southeast Asian Art Goes to School,” which helps develop curricula that use performing arts to teach K-12 students important historical context from Asian American Communities. This project connects NIU students and local in-service teachers with Asian American community members to raise awareness of Asian American cultures and history.

Join the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell for a talk by Marlie Lukach, PhD student in Plant Breeding and Genetics, who will discuss the historical significance of bottle gourd lagenaria siceraria in Southeast Asia.

Join the Royal Society for Asian Affairs for a talk by Dr. Paul Chambers, a foreign academic living in Thailand for over thirty years, who will discuss his experience as the first foreign academic to be wrongfully accused and imprisoned for violating Section 112 (lèse-majesté) of Thailand’s Criminal Code and Computer Crimes Act.

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 Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale for a talk by Quan Tue Tran, Senior Lecturer in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University. Professor Tran’s lecture explores contemporary Vietnamese and Angolan connections through the lens of Quang Linh Vlogs, created by a young Vietnamese migrant who worked and lived in Angola.

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 the Harvard University Science and Technology in Asia seminar series for a talk by Jenna Grant, Associate Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Washington, who will discuss drug-resistant malaria and its implications in the Greater Mekong subregion. Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, will moderate the discussion.

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 Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University for a talk by Benjamin Tausig, Associate Professor of Critical Music Studies at Stony Brook University, who will discuss his book on Maurice Rocco, a queer Black American jazz pianist who was murdered in 1976 in 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 NYSEAN for a book talk by Chiara Formichi, H. Stanley Krusten Professor of World Religions in the Department of Asian Studies. Domestic Nationalism argues that Muslim women in Java and Sumatra, from the late 1910s to the 1950s, were central to Indonesia’s progress as guardians and promoters of health and piety through gendered activities of care work.

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 Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale for a presentation by Dinny Risri Aletheiani, faculty member at the Council on Southeast Asia Studies in the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and Director of Southeast Asia Language Studies at Yale University. The presentation will look at the Orang Rimba, inhabitants of the rainforest of Southern Sumatera, and how adapting to new environmental changes in their ancestral forest due to land developments have made them a target for a new “educational project.”

Join NYSEAN and Sulo: The Philippine Studies Initiative at NYU for a talk by Dr. Oona Paredes, Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA’s Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, who will discuss how a team of Higaunon people transformed their oral tradition into written form.

Join the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a talk by Analyn Salvador-Amores, Professor of Anthropology and former Director of the Museo Kordilyera at the University of the Philippines-Baguio. Dr. Salvador-Amores will discuss the commodification and revival of Indigenous tattoos from the Northern Philippines.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at NIU and the Philippine Consulate General of Chicago for a presentation by Ambeth Ocampo, Professor of History at Ateneo de Manila University, who will discuss how people have utilized the history of the Philippines for better or worse.

Join NYSEAN and Sulo: The Philippines Studies Initiative at NYU for a showcase of Filipino student filmmakers at NYU: Cal Galicia, Haley Jade Odum, Jack Lacy, and Lauren Luke. This program highlights and celebrates the work of these emerging storytellers before their films premiere on the festival circuit and beyond.

Join the Asian American / Asian Research Institute at CUNY for a talk by Vina Orden, who will present on her essay in CUNY FORUM Volume 11:1, examining how narratives in popular media can perpetuate or challenge existing power structures and colonial mentalities.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University (NIU) for a talk by Kanjana Thepboriruk, Associate Professor at NIU’s Department of World Languages and Cultures, who will discuss her work conducting oral history interviews with Thai Americans.

Join the Center for Southeast Asian Studies for a talk by Mu'izz Abdul Khalid, a Research Associate at the Global Awareness and Impact Alliance, who will discuss the paradoxical status Bruneians face as both citizens and subjects of Brunei, the last absolutist kingdom in Southeast Asia. With their hybrid status, Khalid argues Bruneians are compelled to constantly negotiate their political lives, balancing their status as subjects with subtle acts of citizenship, often in the form of “quiet activism.”

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 the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University for a talk by Anocha Suwichakornpong, Associate Professor of Film from Columbia University, who will discuss how fictional narrative filmmaking can serve as a form of resistance under authoritarian regimes, with a focus on her own practice as a filmmaker and artist working in Thailand.

Join the Thirdworld Newsreel and the Documentary Forum at City College of New York for a screening and discussion of the documentary film Because of You: A History of Kilawin Kolektibo by Desireena Almoradie and Barbara Malaran. The screening will be followed by a talkback with the co-directors and fellow past participants of Kilawin Kolektibo.