NUS Southeast Asian Studies

🎓 Outreach Spotlight | Anderson Secondary School

Connecting with Singapore’s Youth: Anderson Secondary School Visit

A fantastic sharing session yesterday (Monday, 18 May) at Anderson Secondary School! 😁

A big thank you to Mr. Don Eu for organizing this and inviting Dr. Effendy, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, to speak with the students. It was an incredibly immersive session exploring the complexities of the Vietnam War and its profound, consequential impact on the Southeast Asian region.

The energy in the room was awesome, the students were fully locked in! They asked some truly sharp questions during the Q&A, showing a keen interest in unpacking the specific strategic adaptations of the French, American, and Vietnamese forces. Love seeing that kind of curiosity and analytical thinking!

It is always a privilege bringing the Department of Southeast Asian Studies to the young, bright minds of Singapore.

📝 Dr Effendy
📸 Dr Effendy

🎓 Outreach Spotlight | Nan Hua Primary School

It was a delight to visit Nan Hua Primary School on 7 May 2026! Dr Effendy, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, NUS, was invited to share his perspectives on Southeast Asian culture and history with the school's students.

The session was truly memorable, the students came remarkably well-prepared and offered thoughtful insights about the region. The Q&A that followed was equally impressive, spanning topics from the intricacies of rice cultivation to the strategic role of ASEAN in shaping our region today.

It is always heartening to see young minds engaging so keenly with Southeast Asian studies, and a reminder of why community outreach matters.

A warm thank you to Ms Violet and the Nan Hua Primary School for the kind invitation, we hope this is the first of many such exchanges! 🌏

Launching now:
New Graduate Certificate programmes in Southeast Asian Studies. Apply from May 4!

Memory-Making and Democracy (un-) Building in Southeast Asia: the Case of the Philippines by Dr Jamie Pring as part of our Voices from Southeast Asia Seminar Series.
📅 6 May 2026
🕝 3.00 PM
📍AS8 06-46
Register now! https://jamiepring.peatix.com/

We were very pleased to host the second guest speaker of our Voices from Southeast Asia Seminar Series this week. Launched in 2025, the series celebrates scholarship and scholars from across Southeast Asia, beyond Singapore.

Dr. Vilashini "Vila" Somiah is a feminist anthropologist with a focus on the lived experiences, narratives and agency of Bornean women, migrants, Indigenous communities, and gender and s*xual minorities. A Sabahan of mixed Tamil and Indigenous heritage, she is a tenured Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Universiti Malaya. With nearly fifteen years of research experience, Dr. Somiah has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Sabah, Sarawak, and the Peninsular of Malaysia. Her first book, Irregular Migrants and the Sea at the Borders of Sabah, Malaysia: Pelagic Alliance (2022), won the ACUM (The Universiti Malaya Award for Outstanding Achievement) for Best Social Science book.

Her vibrant talk on Wednesday, 15 April 2026, titled "Paradoxical Belonging: Law, Faith, and Stateless Transgender Lives in Sabah," explored the intimately entangled worlds of displaced, undocumented, stateless, and dispossessed Indigenous communities in Malaysian Borneo. Dr Somiah examined how one particularly marginalised group - stateless Muslim transgender s*x workers - is simultaneously hyper-regulated and unrecognised as rights-bearing subjects within a "legal infrastructure of exclusion" composed of civil law, Syariah law, and Native Courts in Sabah and Sarawak. As she concluded, "the result is a deeply uneven system in which impossibility is manufactured, abandonment is normalised, and morality is weaponised to further marginalise those at the edges of recognition."

In addition to being an internationally recognised scholar - her recent appointments include fellowships at the London School of Economics' Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and Harvard University's Asia Center - Dr Somiah also serves on the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies and co-founded The Datum Initiative, a regional research observatory working at the intersection of data, justice, and inclusive socio-economic transformation in Southeast Asia. Dr Somiah's work extends beyond scholarship; in her words, "to speak of one community, specifically stateless Muslim transgender women, is not just an academic exercise but an act of connection."

As communities across Southeast Asia welcome the Theravāda Buddhist New Year, celebrated as Songkran in Thailand, Thingyan in Myanmar, Chaul Chnam Thmey in Cambodia, and Pi Mai in Laos, we pause to honour the richness of this tradition.

Rooted in the solar calendar and the teachings of Theravāda Buddhism, these New Year celebrations mark a time of renewal, purification, and merit-making. Water rituals, temple offerings, and the honouring of elders are shared threads that unite these vibrant, distinct cultural expressions across the region.

To all who are celebrating, we extend our warmest wishes for peace, wisdom, and well-being in the year ahead.

สวัสดีปีใหม่ · သႀကၤန္မဂၤလာ · សួស្តីឆ្នាំថ្មី · ສະບາຍດີປີໃໝ່

The 5th edition of our annual Asian Studies Graduate Workshop took place this week, bringing together 14 graduate students from two departments - Malay Studies and Southeast Asian Studies - and two programmes: South Asian Studies and Comparative Asian Studies. Across a wide spectrum of topics - and spanning countries at both the centres and borders, including China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand - students shared research proposals on subjects ranging from 'classical' and new art forms, curatorial contestations, and media infrastructure to land resistance and border governance; and from ethnicity, gender, s*xuality, and body politics to religious subjectivities and Islamic cosmopolitanism. The workshop sparked lively and engaging discussions, highlighting the diversity and vitality of interdisciplinary research in Asian Studies at NUS FASS.

Many thanks to our organising committee - Daryl Lim (SEAS), Charul Mehndiratta (SAS), and Zhang Min (CAS) - for their excellent work in bringing the event together, and to Radin Mohamed Asri for his invaluable logistical support.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1516376120493522&type=3

We are pleased to announce our upcoming annual Asian Studies Graduate Workshop. Our graduate students from the Department of Malay Studies, the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, the South Asian Studies Programme and the Comparative Asian Studies programme will present their research projects spanning Southeast Asia, as well as China, India, and Japan.

We warmly invite you to join us for engaging discussions on these exciting and diverse topics.

Asian Studies Graduate Workshop 2026
📅 6 April 2026, Monday
🕝 8.30AM to 4.30PM
📍AS8 04-04

Law, faith, and the fragile limits of belonging. Join us for Paradoxical Belonging: Law, Faith, and Stateless Transgender Lives in Sabah with Dr. Vilashini Somiah (Universiti Malaya) as part of our Voices from Southeast Asia Seminar Series.
📅 15 April 2026
🕝 3.00 PM
📍AS8 04-01
Register now! https://vilashini.peatix.com/