Sydney Southeast Asia Centre - SSEAC

Last week, the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) team visited Parliament House in Canberra to discuss one of Australia’s most important long-term challenges: building stronger Asia capability.

Our conversations focused on the recommendations arising from the House Standing Committee on Education’s inquiry into Building Asia Capability in Australia through the education system and beyond, the Government’s response, and the critical role universities can play in developing Australia’s linguistic, cultural, educational and research connections with our region. 
We were pleased to share how universities contribute to this agenda through research, teaching, student mobility, international partnerships and community engagement, while highlighting the growing importance of Southeast Asia to Australia’s future prosperity, security and social cohesion. 
Thank you to those who generously gave their time and shared their perspectives:

🔹Tim Watts MP, Chair of the Standing Committee on Education and Special Envoy for the Indian Ocean and Member for Gellibrand
🔹 The Office of Dr. Carina Garland MP, Member for Chisholm
🔹 Zhi Soon MP, Member for Banks
🔹 Dave Sharma, Senator for New South Wales
🔹 Mary Aldred MP, Member for Monash
🔹 Dai Le MP, Member for Fowler
🔹 Sam Birrell, Member for Nicholls

It was encouraging to see strong interest across the Parliament in strengthening Australia’s Asia capability and ensuring future generations have the knowledge, language skills, cultural understanding and regional connections needed to thrive.

SSEAC looks forward to continuing to support this national conversation through evidence-based research, policy engagement, education and partnerships across Southeast Asia.

We’re pleased to invite you to join us for the Sydney Vietnam Innovation Symposium 2026 to be held in Ho Chi Minh City in September.

This dynamic event brings together academics, researchers, clinicians, industry leaders, policymakers and institutional partners from Australia and Vietnam to share ideas, showcase research and build new connections.

Centred on Fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation between Australia and Vietnam, the Symposium will explore emerging global challenges and opportunities for collaboration across a range of disciplines, from health, science and technology to agriculture, arts, social sciences, business and the economy.

The program will feature keynote presentations, invited talks, research presentations, poster sessions and panel discussions designed to spark dialogue and support long-term partnerships between Australian and Vietnamese institutions.

The Symposium is supported by the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC), Sydney Vietnam Academic Network and The University of Sydney Vietnam Institute.

📅 Wednesday 9 September 2026
⏰ 9:00 am to 6:00 pm

🔗 Learn more and register for online attendance:
https://lnkd.in/g3Ki7Y7e

We hope you can join us as we share ideas, strengthen connections and grow together!

🚨We are just 10 days away! Have you secured your spot?

Unbroken: Resilience, Dissent, and the Future of Democracy in Southeast Asia

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear directly from prominent Singaporean pro-democracy leader, Dr. Chee Soon Juan. In his upcoming lecture, Unbroken: Resilience, Dissent, and the Future of Democracy in Southeast Asia, Dr. Chee will unpack the emotional toll of political dissent, the limits of technocracy, and his vision for democratic renewal.

Whether you are a student, scholar, activist, or simply passionate about human rights and civic life, this is an evening you won’t want to miss.

🗓 When: Thursday, 20 August 2026 | 5:00 PM (Lecture starts at 6:00 PM)
📍 Where: Institute Lecture Theatre (1) N295, Institute Building, University of Sydney
🤝 Co-hosted with: Malaysia and Singapore Society of Australia (MASSA)
🎟️ Seats are filling up fast! Tap the link in our bio to register today.

The Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) invites you to a special hybrid seminar exploring the history of the Karen, or Kayin (ကရင်), people of Myanmar and Thailand.

Join us on Friday 21 August 2026, from 12:00 to 1:00 pm, in Room 708, Level 7, Jane Foss Russell Building (G02), or attend online.

Professor Angelene Naw will share insights from her book, The History of the Karen People of Burma, tracing the Karen people’s history from the pre-colonial era to the 21st century through a Karen Christian perspective. The presentation will explore religion, education, nationalism, military conflict and Burma’s political history, as well as the Karen people’s first encounters with Baptist missionaries, including Adoniram Judson.

Register for webinar using the link in our bio.

Join us for the upcoming SSSWARM Seminar ‘Socialising Land: Intersections of Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos’.

Drawing on his 2025 monograph, ‘Socializing Land: Plantations, Dispossession, and Resistance in Laos’, Dr Miles Kenney-Lazar will examine the expansion of Chinese and Vietnamese pulpwood and rubber plantations onto Indigenous Brou lands in southern Laos.

The seminar will explore land not as an “empty” or “degraded” resource, but as a complex web of relationships connecting peasant farmers, state officials, civil society organisations, and plantation capitalists. It will consider how competing claims to rice fields, fallows, and forestland shape control of land, rural livelihoods, and local environments.

Introductory remarks by Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC)’s Laos Country Convenor, Professor Nick Enfield.

Join us for a compelling conversation about plantations, dispossession, resistance, and the contested meaning of land in Laos.

📅 Thursday, 20 August 2026
🕒 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm
📍 A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 341
💻 Online attendance available.
🎟️ Free event. Read more and register here: https://bit.ly/4yG96GI

Over the weekend, scholars from 19 institutions gathered at the University of Sydney for the Australian Society for Asian Humanities Conference.

We were privileged to begin the event with a powerful keynote by Professor Katharine McGregor (University of Melbourne) on Submerged Histories: Reflections on New Ways of Remembering Colonial Histories in Indonesia Today. Drawing on her work in memory activism and historical justice, the keynote examined how artists and community historians are engaging with submerged histories to create a more plural, inclusive past.

It takes a dedicated network of scholars to uncover these histories, and it takes a village to run an incredible conference! 🤝

We learned that minor networks in Asia have left a highly tangible mark on art history, with practitioners actively mapping these relationships today. Speaking of incredible networks, we want to send a massive thank you to our phenomenal volunteers and presenters!

From deep dives into 18th-century Chinese literature (thank you, Boyu Xia!) to keeping everything running smoothly behind the scenes, we couldn’t have done this without Yohanes, Dira Amanda, Andini, Aya, Afira, and the rest of our brilliant team.

Thank you for your energy, your research, and your support. We look forward to the many connections and ideas that will continue to emerge from this weekend!

How well do we understand the region we are most deeply connected to?

This Global Peace Index 2026 snapshot from the Global Peace Index shows the diversity of peace and security settings across Southeast Asia — from Singapore, ranked 8th globally, Malaysia, 12th, and Timor-Leste, 32nd, to countries facing much more challenging security conditions.

It is a timely visual alongside the new Parliament of Australia report, “Security and Prosperity in Asia: Building Australia’s Asia Capability”, which calls for renewed national focus on the knowledge, language skills, cultural understanding and regional experience Australia needs to engage effectively with Asia.

The report highlights a concerning decline in Australia’s Asia capability pipeline: domestic university enrolments in Southeast Asian languages fell by 75% between 2005 and 2024, and only 3.3% of Year 12 students studied a priority Asian language in 2023.

For universities, this is a reminder that Asia capability is not only about language learning. It is also about research, teaching, partnerships, in-country experience and the long-term relationships that help Australia understand and work with our region. This message strongly resonates with Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC)’s work addressing important challenges confronting Southeast Asia through outstanding research, education and partnerships.

Read the full report and further information, including quotes and statistics gathered throughout the Inquiry process on the website www.chooseasia.net