SEA Studies Symposium 2014 – Call for Volunteers

Following on from the great success of the Southeast Asian Studies Symposium 2013, Project Southeast Asia is seeking enthusiastic volunteers to join the organising committee and to convene panel sessions for the 2014 Symposium, to be held 22-23 March 2014. We welcome students and scholars of all levels who are interested in Southeast Asia. The conference is entirely volunteer-run and thus offers great scope for enterprising, entrepreneurial individuals to really make a difference in the field of Southeast Asian Studies

Our first meeting will be on 8 May 2013, Wednesday, at 7 pm, in the Stapeldon Room at Exeter College. Please e-mail huu.hoang@exeter.ox.ac.uk to let us know you will be attending.

About the Symposium:

Project Southeast Asia’s Southeast Asian Studies Symposium is an interdisciplinary conference on contemporary issues in Southeast Asia. The 2013 conference attracted 241 participants, 105 papers in 22 panels. Its chief aim is to provide a rare and valuable opportunity for scholars and researchers of Southeast Asia to engage in dialogue and exchange of ideas.

Participants included Mark Pritchard, MP and Chair for the All-Party Group for ASEAN in the UK Parliament; the Ambassadors/High Commissioners of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Brunei; Lord Cranbrook, environmental biologist; and Datuk Amar Abang Haji Abdul Rahman Zohari, Sarawak Minister of Tourism. The conference also featured a cultural performance by the Burmese artist and former political prisoner Htein Lin as well as three roundtables on Myanmar, natural resource governance and Borneo/Kalimantan Studies

More information about the 2013 Symposium is available at http://projectsoutheastasia.com/academic-events/sea-symposium-2013

About Project Southeast Asia:

Project Southeast Asia is an initiative by scholars of Southeast Asia in Oxford to create an interdisciplinary Centre for Southeast Asian Studies. It organises a range of academic activities on Southeast Asia, and seeks to coordinate academic activity on the region.

More information about Project Southeast Asia is available at http://projectsoutheastasia.com & http://www.facebook.com/projectsoutheastasia

SEA Studies Symposium 2013 – Advance Registration Closed

Advance registration for the Symposium is now closed. Onsite registration will be available on the day of the Symposium. The onsite registration fee for students, OAP, and others eligible for concessions is £45 per day or £55 for two days; for professionals, £65 per day or £85 for two days. Cash or cheque only.

SEA Studies Symposium 2013 – Dinner Registration Closed

Registration for the Symposium dinner has now closed. Registration for the Symposium remains open and will close on 28 February 2013 at 12 noon GMT.

SEA Studies Symposium 2013 – Registration Closing Soon

Registration for the Southeast Asian Studies Symposium will close on 28 February 2013. However, registration for the Symposium dinner (with dinner speaker Lord Cranbrook and a Sarawak Cultural Show) will close on 23 February 2013. Thus if you wish to participate in the Symposium dinner, please register for the Symposium before 23 February 2013. We do hope you will all join us at the Symposium!

SEA Studies Symposium 2013 – Keynote Speaker

We are delighted that Mark Pritchard MP, Chair of the All-Party Group for ASEAN in the UK Parliament, will be gracing the Symposium as one of its keynote speakers.

Mr Pritchard is the Member of Parliament for the Wrekin in Shropshire. He is also a member of the UK’s Joint National Security Strategy Committee, member of the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and the Vice Chairman of the Conservative Parliamentary Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. In addition to his main political contributions in the areas on defence, cyber-security, homeland security, and foreign relations, Pritchard is also known for advocating animal welfare and pro-life issues. He introduced three animal welfare related private bills – Sale of Endangered Animals on the Internet (Prohibition) Bill in 2006, Primates as Pets (Prohibition) Bill in 2007, and Common Birds (Protection) Bill in 2009. His contribution in animal welfare issues has seen him being nominated for numerous awards including the Dodds Charity Champion Award for Animal Welfare. Pritchard was also the mover of the key amendment to the Human and Fertilization and Embryology Bill between 2005-2010 in the Parliament, which aimed to reduce the abortion termination term limit from 24 weeks to 16 weeks.

Pritchard was named as one of London’s 1000 most influential people by the London Evening Standard in 2011.

SEA Studies Symposium 2013 – Dinner Speaker

We are pleased to announce that the speaker for the Southeast Asian Studies Symposium dinner on 9 March 2013 will be internationally renowned zoologist and environmental biologist Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, the 5th Earl of Cranbrook. He will be speaking on the environment and Borneo/Kalimantan.

Lord Cranbrook’s PhD concerned the biology of cave swiftlets – the Southeast Asian birds that build edible nests – and, from 1956, his first professional posts were at institutions in that region. He has worked as a Technical Assistant at the Sarawak Museum (1956-8), where inter alia he was charged with (a) investigating the edible-nest swiftlets, and (b) sorting and (as far as possible) identifying animal remains from the Museum’s archaeological digs, two projects that have provided a lifetime of research interest. From this start, his research interests have focussed on the taxonomy and ecology of Southeast Asian mammals and birds, and zooarchaeological study of vertebrate remains from local excavations. He subsequently was a postdoctoral fellow in Indonesia, and then worked at the University of Malaya (1961-1970).

He returned to the UK in 1970. He has subsequently held a mix of part-time positions in the voluntary, public and private sectors, including service as an elected Parish and District Councillor, a member of the Natural Environment Research Council, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, trustee of the British Museum (Natural History), chairman of the Institute for European Environmental Policy, environmental adviser to the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, and policy roles in the water and waste management industries. He has also been a recurrent returnee to Southeast Asia, on projects of all sorts, most recently (since 2009) as external adviser to Yayasan Ulin, a small conservation trust based in Kalimantan Timur.

In 1978, on the death of his father, he succeeded to a seat in the House of Lords, becoming the sixth generation of his family in a direct line to sit in the UK Parliament. In this position, he concentrated on the interface of environment and politics, serving on select committees for science & technology, and European environmental issues (three times chairing the environment subcommittee), until excluded by the 1999 Act. In 1985, he led the first large appeal for funds by ITZN, and from 2001 – 2008 he served as chairman of the Trust.

His publications include many scientific papers on South-east Asian regional biology and zooarchaeology, and a dozen books includingMammals of Borneo (1965, revised edn 1977), The Wild Mammals of Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia) and Singapore (1969, 2nd edn 1978), Birds of the Malay Peninsula, vol. 5. (with D. R. Wells, 1976), Mammals of South-East Asia (1987, 2nd edn 1991), Key environments: Malaysia (Ed. & contributor 1988), Belalong: a Tropical Rainforest (with D. S. Edwards, 1994), Wonders of Nature in South-East Asia (1997), Sya’ir Jerjezang (The Ballad of Jerjezang) (2000, reprint 2008), Swiftlets of Borneo: Builders of Edible Nests (with Lim Chan Koon 2002, 2nd ed. 2013).

Another interesting fact: Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, the 1st Earl of Cranbrook, was educated at Oriel College, and was later Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford from 1865 – 1878.

You can find out more about the Symposium or register for the Symposium using the links on the right.

SEA Studies Symposium 2013 – Registration Now Open

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the 2nd Annual Southeast Asian Studies Symposium.

The Symposium will be held in St Anne’s College, Oxford OX2 6HS on 9-10 March 2013. Already one of the largest annual Southeast Asian Studies conferences in the world, this year sees 22 panels with 104 papers spread over 30 sessions. Speakers and paper presenters come from over 20 countries, and represent a wide array of disciplines and expertise. For more information, please see the programme and the list of panels. Events will be held in St Anne’s modern Ruth Deech Building, with keynote addresses and major panels in the Mary Ogilvie Lecture Theatre.

Registration is available for one or both days. The registration fee for students, OAP, and others eligible for concessions is £40 per day or £50 for two days; for professionals, £60 per day or £80 for two days. The registration fee includes a conference pack, refreshments, and lunch on both days. Lunch will be catered by St Anne’s College’s award-winning kitchen, selected as “Kitchen of the Year” in the Oxford Colleges annual dining awards.

The Symposium dinner will be held at 8pm on Saturday, 9 March 2013, at Balliol College, Oxford. The College, founded 1263, features the historic candlelit Balliol Dining Hall. A 3-course set menu including wine, coffee, and Balliol mints has been specially developed by Balliol’s award-winning kitchen, headed by Chef de Cuisine Bertrand Faucheux. The dinner will also feature a speech by renowned zoologist of Southeast Asia Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 5th Earl of Cranbrook, as well as a special Sarawak Cultural Show sponsored by the Sarawak Ministry of Tourism. The cost of the dinner is £29.

Please head to the registration page to register. For more information, please refer to the links on the right-hand sidebar. We look forward to seeing you at the Symposium!

SEA Studies Symposium 2013 – Call for Volunteers

Following on from the great success of the Southeast Asian Studies Symposium 2012, Project Southeast Asia is seeking enthusiastic volunteers to join the organising committee for the 2013 Symposium. We welcome students and scholars of all levels who are interested in Southeast Asia and wish to gain experience of and exposure to the field of Southeast Asian studies.

About the Symposium:
Project Southeast Asia’s Southeast Asian Studies Symposium is an interdisciplinary conference on contemporary issues in Southeast Asia. In its first year in 2012, it was already the largest annual conferences on Southeast Asian studies in Europe. Its chief aim is to provide a rare and valuable opportunity for younger scholars and researchers of Southeast Asia to engage in dialogue and exchange of ideas.

The 2012 Symposium was also notable for how it drew together participants from academia, business and politics – among the attendees were the Indonesian Ambassador and his staff, as well as top executives from major Southeast Asian companies, all of whom were keen to engage academics conducting research into Southeast Asia’s contemporary issues.

About Project Southeast Asia:
Project Southeast Asia is an initiative by scholars of Southeast Asia within Oxford to create an interdisciplinary Centre for Southeast Asian Studies. It will emphasise core disciplines in the humanities and social sciences while addressing contemporary issues facing Southeast Asia, such as infectious diseases, climate change, migration, ageing and sustainable development. The Project will support research, student degree programmes, library and archival resources, institutional exchanges and academic events. Finally, it will ensure that the most talented students, regardless of need, will be able to study Southeast Asia at Oxford.

To date, the Project has hosted a successful Southeast Asian Studies symposium as well as a seminar series and film screenings. It has also raised funds for The Cambodia Trust through participation in the ASEAN Rickshaw Run.

Interested in being a part of the Symposium or Project Southeast Asia?
E-mail  dorlisa@projectsoutheastasia.com with your name, course, subject, college and SEA countries of interest. Our introductory meeting will be held in Week 2 on Thursday, 18 October 2012 from 6 to 7.30 pm at the Institute of Human Sciences, 58 Banbury Road.