Asia Research Institute, NUS

What does it take to thrive in academia when English isn’t your first language?

At Tuesday's (June 16) ARI-Luce Collaboratory Academy, renowned historian Professor Thongchai Winichakul reflected on his journey as a historian working across Thai and international academic contexts. He shared the challenges language posed throughout his career, and the practical strategies he developed to overcome them - from reading for key ideas and taking extensive notes to adapting his writing for different audiences.

Professor Winichakul's message was clear: intellectual curiosity, persistence, and strong ideas matter more than flawless English.

Henry Luce Foundation

Yesterday, on June 15, the ARI–LUCE Southeast Asian Studies Collaboratory kicked off its Academy series with a roundtable on The Craft of Scholarly Writing: Challenges, Strategies and the Long Work of the Page.

Assoc Prof Maitrii V. Aung-Thwin, Prof Thongchai Winichakul, Dr Mala Rajo Sathian, Assoc Prof Lisandro E. Claudio, Prof Miriam T. Stark, and Prof George E. Dutton shared candid reflections on writing, revision, rejection, collaboration, and finding your voice as a scholar. Moderated by Ms Aishah Alhadad.

Henry Luce Foundation

Thrilled to kick off Day 1 of two ARI initiatives that reflect our long-standing commitment to supporting the next generation of Southeast Asia scholars: the 21st Singapore Graduate Forum on Southeast Asian Studies and the inaugural ARI-Luce Collaboratory.

The Graduate Forum continues a tradition of bringing together emerging researchers working on Southeast Asia. Led by ARI Assistant Director Assoc/Prof Maitrii Aung-Thwin and Ms Aishah Alhadad and launched with the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation, the new ARI-Luce Collaboratory focuses on a different but equally important stage of the academic journey: supporting recent PhDs and early-career scholars as they navigate the transition into professional academic life.

As Prof Aung-Thwin shared in his opening remarks, the idea grew in part from his own experience as a “very lost postdoc” and the challenges of learning what it means to be a professional scholar, both inside and outside the academy.

The ARI-LUCE Collaboratory is recognition that becoming a scholar involves much more than producing good research. It is also about learning how to build networks, sustain collaborations, find mentors, and contribute both within and beyond the academy and reflects ARI's broader role as an intellectual and institutional bridge in global Southeast Asian Studies.

Welcome all!

We would also like to acknowledge, with deep appreciation, our 2026 Mentors:

𝗟𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗼 𝗘. 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼
Associate Professor, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Chair, Center for Southeast Asia Studies (CSEAS), University of California, Berkeley

𝗚𝗲𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗲 𝗘. 𝗗𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗻
Professor, Asian Languages and Cultures, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair, Southeast Asia Council and Benda Book Prize Committee, Association for Asian Studies, Inc. (AAS)

𝗠𝗮𝗹𝗮 𝗥𝗮𝗷𝗼 𝗦𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗮𝗻
Senior Lecturer, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Universiti Malaya
Board Member, Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program
Board Member, Getsea - A Consortium of Centers for Southeast Asian Studies

𝗠𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗺 𝗧. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗸
Professor of Anthropology, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Director, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

𝗧𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗶 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗸𝘂𝗹
Emeritus Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Visiting Professor, Thammasat University

📣 Call for Papers: Becoming Infrastructure
Digital Ubiquity, Societal Transformation, and Spaces of Possibility

As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in everyday life, how do they become infrastructure? What new forms of power, inequality, agency, and possibility emerge when platforms, payment systems, social media, and AI become essential to how societies function?

This interdisciplinary workshop invites empirically grounded, qualitative research—primarily from Asia—that explores the processes and consequences of digital infrastructuralization.

📅 Workshop: 18–19 February 2027
📍 National University of Singapore
🗓️ Call for Papers Deadline: 10 July 2026

Themes include:
• Agency, power, and digital access
• Unintended consequences and contingency
• New possibilities for social, spatial, and political transformation
• Connections with urbanization, platformization, globalization, and territorialization

Selected participants will receive support for travel and accommodation, and papers will be considered for publication opportunities.

Convenors

Dr Xiaoling CHEN | Asia Research Institute, NUS
Asst Prof Dylan BRADY | Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
Prof Tim BUNNELL | Asia Research Institute, NUS & Department of Geography, National University of Singapore
Dr Elisabeth PEYROUX | The French National Centre for Scientific Research - CNRS - Irasec (Institut de recherche sur l'Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine) & Asia Research Institute, NUS

CFP | Becoming Infrastructure: Digital Ubiquity, Societal Transformation, and Spaces of Possibility » Asia Research Institute, NUS CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: 10 JULY 2026 Digital technologies have significantly transformed our societies. Indeed, the digital has become infrastructural for the function of society. E-commerce, social media platforms, applications, digital payment systems, and AI tools have become deeply embedded in...

In the inaugural Muhammad Alagil Arabia Asia Studies Lecture, Ismail Fajrie Alatas challenges some of the most familiar ways we think about transregional history.

Drawing on a remarkable Arabic text written in Indonesia, 𝘛ā𝘫 𝘢𝘭-𝘈ʿ𝘳ā𝘴 (The Crown of Brides) he explores wilāya—protective friendship—as a way of understanding how people created meaningful connections across oceans, generations, and societies.

Rather than imagining geography through coordinates, borders, or networks, Alatas shows how geographical worlds can be shaped through bonds of affection, patronage, reciprocity, and care.

In doing so, he invites us to consider how histories of friendship might offer not only a distinct cartography, but an alternative ethics for imagining the world.

🎥 Watch the full lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evEr06HzSrg

Opened by Tim Bunnell, former Director of ARI, chaired by Sumit K Mandal, Muhammad Alagil Chair of Arabia Asia Studies, with a commentary by Harini Kumar.

The Sacred is in Relatedness: Arabia-Asia as a Geography of Friendship 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝘂𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗱 𝗔𝗹𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗹 𝗗𝗶𝘀...

Parental migration is widely associated with parent–child separation, yet evidence on how such separation affects children's well-being and development remains mixed and context-dependent.

New research in 𝘈𝘴𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘗𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴 has found significant association between maternal absence and developmental delay in the receptive language domain, suggesting that receptive language development may require particular attention in cases of maternal absence.

Jampaklay, A., Vapattanawong, P., Tangchonlatip, K., Lucktong, A., Yakoh, K., Chamratrithirong, A., & Ford, K. (2026). Parental absence and the development of preschool children in a high migration civil conflict area. 𝘈𝘴𝘪𝘢𝘯 𝘗𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘦𝘴, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441730.2026.2680862

This article is Open Access.

https://doi.org/10.1080/17441730.2026.2680862

Parental absence and the development of preschool children in a high migration civil conflict area Parental migration is widely associated with parent–child separation, yet evidence on how such separation affects children's well-being and development remains mixed and context-dependent. This stu...

Processes of “worlding” illuminate how smart cities are shaped not only by infrastructure and technology, but also by power, aspiration and exclusion.

Galuh Syahbana Indraprahasta's new ARIscope article is a critical examination of the techno-utopian vision underpinning Nusantara, Indonesia’s new capital city, focusing on how the idea of the smart city is imagined and materialised, while often overlooking the everyday realities of its citizens.

Smart Nusantara: Technological Worlding and the Overlooked Citizens?

Smart Nusantara: Technological Worlding and the Overlooked Citizens? » Asia Research Institute, NUS Smart Nusantara: Technological Worlding and the Overlooked Citizens?13 May 2026By Galuh Syahbana IndraprahastaNusantarasmart citiesSoutheast AsiaUrban Asiaurban futuresurbanism Prologue In his presidential address to the House of Representatives (DPR) on the eve of the 2019 Independence Day celebrat...

"There's also a lack of trust in the system. So even when people are recycling, or feel like they may be recycling, they may still think that there is no true or real recycling happening."

Drawing on qualitative interviews with ordinary residents in Singapore, new research by Qian Hui Tan and Brenda S. A Yeoh explores their predominantly inter-Asian references to cities perceived as having more effective household recycling and plastic reduction policies.

Tan, Q. H., & Yeoh, B. S. A. (2026). Circulating referencescapes: inter-Asian references to circular urban policies among ordinary residents in Singapore. 𝘜𝘳𝘣𝘢𝘯 𝘎𝘦𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩𝘺, 1–24.

Circulating referencescapes: inter-Asian references to circular urban policies among ordinary residents in Singapore Whereas smart and sustainable urbanism has been well examined in the literature on inter-urban referencing, circular urban policies aimed at encouraging R-behaviors (e.g. reduce, recycle) have rece...

Selamat Hari Raya Haji to all who celebrate 🌙 Wishing you and your families peace, joy, and blessings.

📢 CALL FOR PAPERS
📍 At the Crossroads: Dunhuang and its Global Connections
🗓 8–10 January 2027
📌 ACM (Asian Civilisations Museum), Singapore
⏰ Submission Deadline: 15 July 2026

The ACM (Asian Civilisations Museum), in collaboration with the The Courtauld Institute, Asia Research Institute, NUS, Harvard-Yenching Institute, and the Dunhuang Foundation, will host a three-day international conference in Singapore from 8 to 10 January 2027. The conference will be held in conjunction with the special exhibition, Sacred Caves: Dunhuang, Buddhism, and the Silk Road, at the ACM (Asian Civilisations Museum).

This conference seeks to advance new scholarship on Dunhuang as a dynamic node of transregional exchange, situating it within broader networks of Buddhist, artistic, and intellectual circulation across Asia and beyond. While highlighting recent research on this UNESCO World Heritage site, the conference also aims to rethink Dunhuang’s place within a wider Buddhist world by foregrounding its global connections—across regions, media, and historical periods.

Suggested topics include:
• Archaeology, material culture, and conservation
• Manuscripts, texts, and literary cultures
• Dunhuang and the Indian Ocean world
• Transmission of ideas, practices, and iconographies
• Histories of collecting and dispersal
• Museum curation and stewardship
• Contemporary engagements, including digital humanities

Submission requirements:
• Paper title
• Abstract (max. 500 words)
• Short bio (~150 words)
• 2-page CV

Selected presenters will also submit a draft paper (3,000–5,000 words) by 15 December 2026.

Funding support:
Full or partial airfare support and 4 nights’ accommodation in Singapore are available for international participants.

For enquiries:
📧 Valerie Yeo — [email protected]
📧 Professor Tansen Sen — [email protected]

CFP | At the Crossroads: Dunhuang and Its Global Connections » Asia Research Institute, NUS CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: 15 JULY 2026 The Asian Civilisations Museum, in collaboration with the Courtauld Institute, the Asia Research Institute (National University of Singapore), the Harvard-Yenching Institute, and the Dunhuang Foundation, will host a three-day international conference in Singapo...