Reconsidering Southeast Asia: Issues and Prospects | Southeast Asia Program’s 25th Anniversary Conference

Barbara Watson Andaya is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, USA, a former president of the American Association for Asian Studies (2005–2006) and a recipient of the University of Hawaiʻi Regents Medal for Excellence in Research. She was educated at the University of Sydney (BA), the University of Hawaiʿi (MA), and Cornell University (Ph.D). She has lived and taught in Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Singapore, the Netherlands, and the United States. Her area of expertise is the western Malay-Indonesian Archipelago, on which she has published widely but she maintains an active teaching and research interest across all Southeast Asia. She is co-author of  A History of Malaysia, A History of Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1400-1830, and is currently the General Editor of the Cambridge History of Southeast Asia. She is also working on a book on gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia. 

Jacques Bertrand is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, as well as Director of the Collaborative Master’s Specialization in Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Studies (Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Affairs). He is also the co-founder of the Post-conflict Reintegration (Postcor) Lab. His most recent books include Winning by Process: The State and Neutralization of Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar (w/ Ardeth Thawnghmung and Alexandre Pelletier, Cornell UP, July 2022) as well as Democracy and Nationalist Struggles in Southeast Asia: From secessionist mobilization to conflict resolution (Cambridge UP, 2021). His current research, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the United States Institute of Peace, focuses on non-state armed group transitions after civil war, mostly in Southeast Asia. 

Don Emmerson runs Shorenstein APARC’s Southeast Asia Program, is affiliated with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and is Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. In April 2023, to mark APARC’s 40th anniversary, he organized a four-country webinar on the future of intermestic relations in Southeast Asia. As a speaker and teacher, he is an active analyst of the region. His writings span more than a dozen books and monographs and over 300 shorter pieces. In 2010 he won a two-year research award given to “top scholars” who have “successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.” His pre-Stanford stints include a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study. His degrees are from Princeton (BA) and Yale (PhD). His country of least ignorance is Indonesia.

Brian Eyler directs the Southeast Asia Program and the Energy, Water, and Sustainability Program at the Stimson Center. He is widely recognized as a leading voice on environmental, energy, and water security issues in the Mekong. He spent more than 15 years living and working in China and over the last two decades has conducted extensive research with stakeholders in the mainland Southeast Asia. Brian is co-lead on the Mekong Dam Monitor, the winner of 2021 Esri Special Achievement in GIS Award, 1st Prize in the 2021 Prudence Foundation’s Disaster Tech Competition, and the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation’s 2021 Outstanding Achievement Award. He serves as chair of Stimson’s War Legacy Working Group. His first book, Last Days of the Mighty Mekong, was published by Zed Books in 2019. He holds a MA from the University of California, San Diego and a BA from Bucknell University.

Robert W. Hefner is professor of anthropology and global studies at the Pardee School of Global Affairs at Boston University. Hefner has directed some 21 research projects and organized 16 international conferences.  He has authored or edited twenty one books, and co-produced (with Zainal Abidin Bagir) seven documentary films on Indonesia.  His most recent book is Islam and Citizenship in Indonesia: Democracy and the Quest for an Inclusive Public Ethics (Routledge, January 2024).  He is currently (2021-2024) president of the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS).  During 2009-2010 he served as president of the American Association for Asian Studies.

Richard Heydarian is a Senior Lecturer at the Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City and a Manila-based scholar and columnist. Heydarian’s academic career has included professorial positions in political and social science at the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, De La Salle University, and a visiting fellowship at National Chengchi University.  His university lecture venues have included Columbia, Harvard, and Stanford.  A columnist for The Philippine Daily Inquirer, he has also written for leading publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and The New York Times, and has regularly contributed, for example, to Al Jazeera English, Nikkei Asian Review, The South China Morning Post, and The Straits Times. His books include The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New Struggle for Global Mastery (2019); The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt against Elite Democracy (2017), and Asia's New Battlefield: The USA, China and the Struggle for the Western Pacific (2015).

Gerhard Hoffstaedter is Associate Professor in anthropology at the University of Queensland, Australia and the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia 2024. He conducts research with refugees in Southeast Asia, on refugee and immigration policy and on religion and the state. He is the author of Modern Muslim Identities: Negotiating Religion and Ethnicity in Malaysia (NIAS/NUS Press, 2011) and co-edited volumes on Why human security matters: Rethinking Australian Foreign Policy (Allen & Unwin, 2012) and Urban Refugees: Challenges in Protection, Services and Policy (Routledge, 2015). He is also course director for the social anthropology Massive Open Online Course “World101x: The Anthropology of Current World Issues” that has taught thousands of students how to think more anthropologically.

Mala Htun is Professor of Political Science, University of New Mexico. Htun works on comparative politics, women's rights, social inequalities, and strategies to promote inclusive organizational climates in STEM. Htun is the author of three books, including The Logics of Gender Justice: State Action on Women’s Rights around the World, co-authored with Laurel Weldon (Cambridge Press, 2018). She has been Vice President of the American Political Science Association, served as chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession, and co-chaired the Presidential Task Force on Women’s Advancement. She has been an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a fellow at the Kellogg Institute of the University of Notre Dame and the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard, and held the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in Japan. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard and a A.B. in international relations from Stanford. She was an assistant and then associate professor at the New School for Social Research from 2000-2011.  This year she was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Yuen Foong Khong is Co-Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation and Li Ka Shing Professor in Political Science, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Khong was formerly Professor of International Relations and a Professorial Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1987 and was Assistant/Associate Professor at Harvard’s Government Department from 1987-1994. His book, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, 1992; sixth printing 2006) was co-winner of the American Political Science Association’s Political Psychology Book Award (1994). Among his publications are “How Not to Learn from History” (2022), International Affairs, and “The American Tributary System,” The Chinese Journal of International Politics (2013).  He is the Principal Investigator of The Anatomy of Choice: Southeast Asia between the Superpowers, a multi-year project supported by a Singapore Social Science Research Thematic Grant.

Pita Limjaroenrat, born in 1980, is the Prime Ministerial Candidate and Chief Advisor of the Move Forward Party (MFP) in Thailand, which won the most votes and seats in the May 2023 general elections with a social democratic platform. Despite his party's strong mandate, often referred to as "Thailand's Obama Moment," Pita's attempts to form a government were hindered by institutionalized counter-majoritarian mechanisms. As the Prime Ministerial Candidate and Chief Advisor, Pita continues to guide the MFP's strategies, focusing on grassroots issues, welfare improvements, agricultural reform, human rights, demilitarization of Thai politics, demonopolization of the economy, and decentralization of the Thai administrative system, while his prior experience includes executive roles at Grab Thailand and Agrifood, and he holds a joint MPA-MBA degree from Harvard Kennedy School and MIT Sloan.

Ambassador Scot Marciel is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center. Marciel is a Senior Advisor at BowerGroupAsia.  He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2022 after a 37-year career that included assignments as Ambassador to Myanmar, Ambassador to Indonesia, and Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs.  Scot is the author of the new book, Imperfect Partners: The United States and Southeast Asia.

Rebakah Daro Minarchek is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Integrated Social Sciences and International Studies, University of Washington. Minarchek received her Ph.D. in 2019 from the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University. She specializes in environmental sociology and Southeast Asian Studies. Dr. Daro Minarchek has worked as a curriculum developer for the Food and Agricultural Organization and for the International Studies Department at Ohio University. She worked as the Associate Director of the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) from 2013-2016 and as the Managing Director of the Southeast Asia Program at the University of Washington from 2017-2018. Dr. Daro Minarchek’s research interests include environmental justice, the politics of natural resource access, Indigenous rights, gender, and participatory mapping.

Elina Noor is a senior fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where she focuses on developments in Southeast Asia, particularly the impact and implications of technology in reshaping power dynamics, governance, and nation-building in the region. Previously Elina headed political-security affairs in the Asia Society Policy Institute and deputy-directed its Washington, D.C. office. Earlier positions include an associate professorship at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu; directing foreign policy and security studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia; and service with the Brookings Institution’s Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. She has also served on international advisory boards and commissions regarding disarmament, digital conflict, and the stability of cyberspace. Her higher degrees include an LL.M (Public International Law) from the University of London (LSE) and an MA with distinction from Georgetown University as a Women in International Security Scholar.

Gregory B. Poling directs the Southeast Asia Program and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is also a senior fellow. He is a leading expert on the South China Sea disputes and conducts research on U.S. alliances and partnerships, democratization and governance in Southeast Asia, and maritime security across the Indo-Pacific. He is the author of the recently published On Dangerous Ground: America’s Century in the South China Sea, along with various works on U.S. relations with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia at large. His writings have been featured in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, and the Naval War College Review, among others.  Mr. Poling received an MA in international affairs from American University and a BA in history and philosophy from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Mina Roces is a Professor of History at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. She is the author of 5 books, Women, Power, and Kinship Politics: Female Power in Post-War Philippines (Praeger, 1998), Kinship Politics in Post-War Philippines: The Lopez Family, 1946-2000 (de la Salle University Press, 2001), Women’s Movements and the Filipina, 1988-2008 (University of Hawaii Press, 2012), The Filipino Migration Experience: Global Agents of Change, (Cornell University Press, 2021), which won the 2022 NSW Premier’s General History Book Prize, and Gender in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2022). In 2019 she received the Grant Goodman Prize of Excellence in Philippine Historical Studies given by the Philippine Studies Group of the Association for Asian Studies. She is a Phd graduate from the University of Michigan.

Paul Schuler is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona, specializing political institutions and Southeast Asian politics. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Legislative Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of East Asian Studies. His commentary on Vietnamese politics has appeared in the New York Times and BBC. His book United Front on the evolution of the Vietnam National Assembly was published by Stanford University Press. His current research agenda examines the evolution of personality cults in authoritarian regimes. He also examines political gender equality and participation in Vietnam.

James Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology and is co-Director of the Agrarian Studies Program and a mediocre farmer. His research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism. His publications include Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Yale Press, 1985, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale Press 1980, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale Press, 1998; The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale Press, 2008; Two Cheers for Anarchism, Princeton Press, 2013; Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest Agrarian States, Yale Press, 2017. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1967.

Gerald Sim is professor of film and media studies at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology, and Cinema (2014) and Postcolonial Hangups in Southeast Asian Cinema: Poetics of Space, Sound, and Spatiality (2020), which was completed with the support of the LKC Fellowship. His ongoing research on Southeast Asia tracks the rise of an infrastructural film aesthetic that reifies the political presence and social realities of gateway economies in the region—economic, technological, and cultural hubs that facilitate global flows of capital, people, information, and other resources. The first chapter of this work will appear in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Asian Cinema. His third book, Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy, examining the public understanding of big data and the algorithmic systems that structure our digitally mediated lives, is due out this fall.

Mark R. Thompson is Chair Professor of Political Science in the Department of Public & International Affairs (PIA) and Director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC) at the City University of Hong Kong. Thompson was Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia 2008-09 as well as a visiting fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University in winter/spring 2024. His current research centers on democratic backsliding and pushback against it, presidentialism, and authoritarian governance in Southeast Asia. He has published over 200 articles and books chapters and is the author or editor of 11 books, most recently The Philippines: From “People Power” to Democratic Backsliding (Cambridge, 2023), Presidentialism and Democracy in Southeast and East Asia (co-editor, Routledge, 2023), China’s “Singapore Model” and Authoritarian Learning (co-editor, Routledge, 2020) and Authoritarian Modernism in East Asia (Palgrave, 2019). A past president of the Hong Kong Political Science Association and the Asian Political and International Studies Association as well as former head of the Department of Asian and International Affairs at City University of Hong Kong, he is co-editor of the Routledge/CityUHK Southeast Asia Series.

David Timberman served as Director of and then Senior Advisor for Freedom House’s Asia Program from 2019 to 2023, during which time he guided FH’s programs in Myanmar, the Philippines, Taiwan and Sri Lanka.  Prior to joining Freedom House, he held staff or consulting positions with USAID (in Washington and Jakarta), Management Systems International, NDI, and the Asia Foundation. He has published numerous articles on Philippine politics and authored or co-edited several books and monographs, including: Philippine Politics Under Duterte: A Midterm Assessment (2019), Budget Reform in the Philippines: Making the Budget a Tool for National Transformation, (co-edited with Ronald Mendoza, 2019) and A Changeless Land: Continuity and Change in Philippine Politics (1991).  He has taught Southeast Asian politics at Johns Hopkins SAIS, De La Salle University and Stanford University. He holds a BA in Political Science and History from Tufts University and a MA in International Affairs from Columbia University.

Angie Ngọc Trần is Professor of Political Economy, Social Sciences and Global Studies Department, California State University, Monterey Bay. The Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellowship on Southeast Asia helped Trần with resources, transnational networks and fieldwork research that led to her 2013 book, Ties That Bind: Cultural Identity, Class and Law in Flexible Labor Resistance in Vietnam. Transnational networks resulting from the Fellowship contributed to her 2022 book, Ethnic Dissent and Empowerment: Economic Migration between Vietnam and Malaysia which analyzes transnational labor migration with intersectional analysis of five different ethnic groups in Vietnam. During COVID-19, Trần studied and published (in English and Vietnamese) bilateral labor agreement, labor brokerage state, structural violence of the recruitment system that exploits Vietnamese female domestic workers in Saudi Arabia and how they fight back, even without transnational social protection. Recently, Trần secured funding to do a joint ethnographic study of the conditions of Mexican H2A-Visa guest workers who harvest California’s crops and their families in Mexico. Ultimately, Trần will do comparative studies of transnational migrant workers in Southeast Asia and North America.

Gita Wirjawan is a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC. He is the Chairman of Ancora Group, founded in 2007, has held significant roles in both business and public service. He served as Indonesia's Minister of Trade and Chairman of its Investment Coordinating Board, along with chairing a 159-nation WTO ministerial conference in 2012 aimed at reducing global trade barriers. Gita hosts the educational podcast "Endgame," advocating for Southeast Asia's growth and prosperity. He is affiliated with Stanford University, University of Nottingham, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Harvard Kennedy School, focusing his research on Southeast Asia's nation-building directionality. Additionally, Gita is a member of the Angsana Council, dedicated to advancing regional businesses and economies, and collaborates with global advisory firm Macro Advisory Partners. He holds degrees from Harvard Kennedy School (MPA), Baylor University (MBA), and University of Texas at Austin (BSc).