Past events
Constructing a grassroots Muslim majoritarian project
Over the past 30 years, Indonesia has witnessed the growing public prominence of a number of transnational Islamic revivalist movements. These have had a considerable impact on political culture,...
Absolute monarchy and the legal state in Thailand
The modern legal system in Thailand was established in the early twentieth century not as much to save the country from colonialism as to secure the absolutist power of Bangkok’s rulers. It was...
Backlash against Rohingya refugees in Malaysia during COVID-19
Norm scholarship in International Relations (IR) tends to investigate the contestation of actors operating at the peak of governance. It therefore overlooks the perspective of ordinary citizens...
Coercing Mobility: Territory and Displacement in the Politics of Southeast Asian Muslim Movements
The experience of displacement has shaped the politics of many Muslim movements across Southeast Asia.
This panel previews a special issue of Itinerario on coerced mobility, and the...
The coalitions presidents make: Presidential power and its limits in democratic Indonesia
Political scientists have conventionally suggested that presidential systems operating in multi-party regimes face problems of stability and effectiveness.
In recent years, however, a new...
Grasping at the wind: Trends in the historiography of modern Southeast Asia
I am currently writing a chapter on the historiography of modern Southeast Asia for a new edition of the Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, due to appear in 2024.
The field of modern...
In search of analytical parsimony: How to characterise the Indonesian state?
A central question for the development profession is understanding why and how some countries consistently perform strongly according to the usual indicators of development progress.
The...
Can empires of 'race' succeed in containing 'Islam'? Britain, the Pahang War, & the 1902 Siam-Malaya boundary
In 1874, Britain installed a Resident in Perak, its first colony on the Malay Peninsula. It then quickly added more territory to the south; and yet to the north, for two more decades, it...
Saffron Salaams: Why Hindu nationalists need Muslim friends
Why does an organisation of violently Islamophobic Hindu nationalists, the RSS, have a Muslim wing?
Drawing on their fieldwork with this Muslim wing, the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, in North...
PSC Seminar Series
Local government and civil society responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia have been widely lauded in academic and popular media since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed in March 2020...
