The department
The ANU Department of Political and Social Change is a leading centre for the study of Asian politics and society. We have considerable depth of expertise on the political and social dynamics of Indonesia and China, including the highest concentration of academic staff and PhD students specialising in Indonesian politics outside of Indonesia itself.
The Department offers world-class graduate research programs focusing on political science, but also drawing upon the diverse disciplinary backgrounds of our academic staff, including sociology, history and anthropology. Our specialisations include democratisation, national and local politics, gender, conflict and conflict resolution, religious politics and political theory. We also teach courses in a range of undergraduate programs.
We regularly co-sponsor conferences, seminars, and workshops with other centres and departments, including the Indonesia Update conference, which has been held annually since 1983, and the update conferences on Vietnam, Burma/Myanmar and the Philippines. Revised papers from these and other conferences involving the Department are usually published in books.
Since its inception in 1978 the department has supervised almost 80 PhDs.
1984
John Nation
Planned social change: Fijian participation in cattle development projects
1987
Amir Santoro (University of Indonesia)
Public policy implementation: rice policy at the regional level in Indonesia, 1970–1984
1988
Wan Kadir Che Man
Muslim separatism: the Moros in southern Philippines and the Malays in southern Thailand
1989
Jane Ching Yee Lee
The politics of transition in Hong Kong: elections and the mobilization process, 1982–85
Andrew MacIntyre
Politics, policy and participation: business–government relations in Indonesia
1990
Beverley Blaskett
Papua New Guinea–Indonesia relations: a new perspective on the border conflict
Imron Husin
Rural electrification in Indonesia: policy implementation in theory and practice
Viberto Selochan
Professionalization and politicization of the armed forces of the Philippines
1991
Suchai Treerat
Capitalist penetration in rural Thai villages: Suphanburi, 1960–1984
1992
William Standish
Simbu paths to power
1994
Ropate Qalo
Indigenous politics in the governance of Fiji: The case of forestry
1995
Peter Searle
‘Rent-seekers’ or real capitalists? The riddle of Malaysian capitalism
1996
Rory Ewins
Tradition, politics and change in contemporary Fiji and Tonga
1997
Alaine Chanter
‘Contested identity’: The media and independence in New Caledonia during the 1980s
Derry Habir
Public policy and state enterprises in Indonesia
Wendy Timms
The post-World War Two colonial project and Australian planters in Papua New Guinea
Asofou So’o
O le Fuata ma Lona Lou: Indigenous institutions and democracy in Western Samoa
1998
Anne Dickson-Waiko
‘A woman’s place is in the struggle’: Feminism and nationalism in the Philippines
John Maxwell
The making of a political activist: the life of Soe Hok-gie, a young Indonesian intellectual
Shannon Smith
The Indonesian corner of the growth triangle
1999
Jun Honna
The developing civil–military discourse in Indonesia’s late Suharto regime
Ben Reilly
The electoral system in Papua New Guinea
2000
Rohan Ekanayake
State coercion and the ascendancy of civil disorder in Sri Lanka
Russell Heng
Of the state, for the state, yet against the state: the struggle paradigm in Vietnam’s media politics
Maung Aung Myoe
[Jointly with Pacific and Asian History]
The counterinsurgency in Myanmar: the government’s response to the Burma Communist Party
Kayoko Tsumori
The middle class in politics: Political discourse among public intellectuals in Soeharto’s Indonesia
2001
Edward Aspinall
Political opposition and the transition from authoritarian rule: the case of Indonesia
In Won Hwang
Changing conflict configurations and regime maintenance in Malaysian politics: From consociational bargaining to Mahathir’s dominance
David Koh
Wards of Hanoi and state–society relations in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Otto Ondawame
‘One people, one soul’: West Papuan nationalism and the Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM/Free Papua Movement)
Don Porter
The failure of corporatism in Indonesia: Suharto and Islam
2003
Tarcisius Kabutaulaka
Landowners and the struggle for control of Solomon Islands’ logging industry
Nuraida Mokhsen
Decentralization in Indonesia
Trevor Rogers
The Papua New Guinea Defence Force Vanuatu (1980) to Bougainville (1990)
Elizabeth St George
Government policy and changes to higher education in Vietnam, 1986–1998: Education in transition for development?
Andrew Smith
Water first. A political history of hydraulics in Vietnam’s Red River Delta
2004
Nankyung Choi
Democratization, decentralization and local party politics in Post–Soeharto Indonesia
Kumiko Mizuno
Indonesia’s East Timor policy: 1998–2002
Emily Rudland
Political triage: Health and the state in Myanmar
2005
John Gillespie
Transplanting commercial law reform: Developing a ‘rule of law’ in Vietnam
Neilson Mersat
Politics and business in Sarawak (1963–2004)
Marcus Mietzner
Indonesian civil-military relations: The armed forces and political Islam in transition, 1997–2004
Nathan Quimpo
Contested democracy and the Left in the Philippines after Marcos
Natalie Hicks
Organizational adventures in district government: central control versus local initiative in Long An Province, Vietnam
2006
Kikue Hamayotsu
Institutions, parties and Ulama: The making of the Islamic administrative apparatus and the politics of cooption
Morten Pedersen
International democracy promotion in authoritarian states: The Burmese case
Stan Tan
Dust beneath the mist: state and frontier formation and the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the 1955–61 period
Chris Wilson
From soil to God: Ethno-religious violence in North Maluku Province, Indonesia, 1999–2000
2007
Ruth Spriggs
Gender and peace: Bougainville women’s role in the Bougainville peace process, 1990–2001
Bima Sugiarto
Beyond formal politics: Party factionalism and leadership in post-authoritarian Indonesia
Dang Dinh Trung
Agrarian reform in southern Vietnam from 1975 to the late 1980s: From small to large scale farming and back again
2008
Taufiq Tanasaldy
Regional ethnic politics and national political transitions: The Dayaks of West Kalimantan
2009
Beibei Tang
The making of housing status groups in post-reform urban China: Social mobility and status attainment of gated-community residents in Shenyang
Michael Karadjis
The Vietnamese Communist Party debate and the leading role of the state sector: Ideological straight-jacket, vested interests or real social progress?
Meiling Southwell-Lee
Women with money, women with minds: Social status, gender and marriage choices among elite urban women in contemporary China
2010
Frieda Sinanu
Everyday politics of global civil society: A study of the relationships between international and local NGOs in Indonesia
Catherine Hine
Untying the hard knot of her subjugation: Women activists negotiating change in Pakistan
David Jansen The central role of the police in networked security in Indonesia: A case study of Yogyakarta
Antje Missbach
Long-distance politics in transition: Aceh’s diaspora during and after the homeland conflict (1976–2009)
Evelyn Chia Sing-Tingn
Forest governance in Chinese villages: Community, the ‘common interest’ and common pool resources
2011
Takashi Tsukamoto
Encountering the Other within: Thai national identity and the Malay–Muslims of the deep South
Louise Michelle Merrington
Beyond the protracted contest: Redefining the Sino–Indian relationship
Tin Liu
Boys’ love in girls’ hands: The survival of a gendered youth culture in mainland China and Hong Kong
Wai Weng Hew
Negotiating ethnicity and religiosity: Chinese Muslim identities in post–New Order Indonesia
Lichao Yang
A case study of three villages in Shaanxi
Emma Campbell
Uri nara, our nation: Unification, identity and the emergence of a new nationalism amongst South Korean young people
Nattakant Akarapongpisak
Rethinking state-village relations: Positive forms of everyday politics and land occupation in Thailand (1997-2010)
2012
Venkatachalam Thiruppugazh
Post-disaster reconstruction: Policies, performance and politics; a comparative study of three states in India
Nick Cheesman
The politics of law and order in Myanmar
Irwan Sinaga
State and the migration industry in Indonesia: Legal and institutional reforms and the protection of migrant workers
Ayami Noritake
A place of diversity and change: gender, space and agency in a South Korean marketplace area
Kumiko Kawashima
In search of fulfilment: Japan’s lost generation and the Australian working holiday
Tom Cliff
Oil and water: Experiences of being Han in 21st Century Korla, Xinjiang
2013
Prajak Kongkirati
Bosses, bullets and ballots: Electoral violence and democracy in Thailand, 1975–2011
Tracy K.F. Lee
Reading men’s lifestyle magazines in contemporary China
Mei-Ling Ellerman
Subordination at work: Chinese female domestic workers’ struggles between silence and critical consciousness
Nathan Blank
The recruitment industry in the Philippines: Government–business relations in the overseas employment program
Peter O’Donnell
Environmental governance in Northern Thailand
Lior Rosenberg
Policy implementation in contemporary rural China: the case of the village development program
2015
Norshahril Saat
Striving to capture the state: Official Ulema in Indonesia and Malaysia
2016
Peter Chaudhry
Government munificence and the struggle to be poor: Politics, power and the local state in Vietnam’s Northwest Borderlands
Shangpo Hsieh
Nongovernmental organisations and corruption prevention in democratising Indonesia (1998-2008)
Syamsul Rijal
Habaib, markets, and traditional Islamic authority: The rise of Arab preachers in contemporary Indonesia
David Gilbert
Everyday transgender belonging in transitioning Yangon
2017
Kimly Ngoun
The politics of nationalism in Cambodia’s Preah Vihear conflict with Thailand: The state, the city and the border
Tu Phuong Nguyen
Workplace (in)justice, law and labour resistance in Vietnam
Quinton Temby
Jihadists assemble: The rise of militant Islamism in Southeast Asia
Chit Win
Explaining Myanmar’s Hluttaw, 2011-2016: Transitional legitimacy and the politics of legislative autonomy
2018
Sri Lestari Wahyuningroem
From state to civil society: transitional justice and democratization in Indonesia
Meixi Zhuang
The politics of public supervision of government in China: the case of the civil monitory organization
Aisi Shang
Villager responses to drought: an ethnographic study in Southwest China
Justin Whitney
Learning from disaster: resilience and crisis management in Japan (1923-2016)
Eve Warburton (winner of J G Crawford Prize 2018 and the Ann Bates Postgraduate Prize for Indonesian Studies 2018)
Our resources, our rules: a political economy of resource nationalism in Indonesia
Burhanuddin Muhtadi
Buying votes in Indonesia: Partisans, personal networks, and winning margins
2019
Ronald Holmes
The centrality of pork amidst weak institutions: presidents and the persistence of particularism in post-Marcos Philippines (1986-2016)
Daungyewa Utarasint
Voices and votes amid violence: power and electoral accountability in Thailand’s Deep South
Gerard McCarthy
Regressive democracy: explaining distributive politics in Myanmar’s political transition
Dominic Berger
Opportunistic repression: managing anti-state dissent in post-authoritarian Indonesia
2020
Bayu Dardias Kurniadi
Defending the Sultan’s land: Yogyakarta, control over land and aristocratic power in post-autocratic Indonesia
2021
Ana Alonso
Icons of the past: Stories about children born of violence in the Guatemalan and Peruvian Truth Commissions
Camille Boullenois
The self-made entrepreneur: Social identities and the perceived legitimacy of entrepreneurs in inland rural China
Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat
Jihad for Patani: Islam and BRN’s separatist struggle in Southern Thailand
Haula Noor
The family context and its role in making jihadists: The case of the families of jihadists in Indonesia
2022
Ahmad Muhajir
Religion and money politics in Indonesia: Fatwa, pietism and Muslim candidate vote-buying in the 2014 elections
Felix Pal
Weaponised pluralism: Why Hindu nationalists need Muslim friends
Gatra Priyandita
Between honey and poison: Indonesia’s management of ties with a rising China
Sirichinda Thongchinda
The violence of the ties that bind: Kinship, gender and monarchy in Thailand