Best Vivian Nguyen Podcasts (2025)

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The May 2025 Mid-Term Elections in the Philippines 47:08

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1h ago47:08

47:08

Today’s episode focuses on the mid-term elections in the Philippines which were held in May of this year, including all local elected positions, all seats in the House of Representatives, and twelve of the twenty-four seats in the Senate. The elections have been viewed as a reflection on the administration of President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos, …

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Vivian Kong, "Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45" (Cambridge UP, 2023) 1:07:30

23h ago1:07:30

1:07:30

What does it mean to be British? To answer this, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45 (Cambridge UP, 2023) by Dr. Vivian Kong takes us to an underexplored site of Britishness – the former British colony of Hong Kong. Vivian Kong asks how colonial hierarchies, the racial and cultural diversity of the British Empire, and glo…

1
Lieba Faier, "The Banality of Good: The UN's Global Fight Against Human Trafficking" (Duke UP, 2024) 58:44

4d ago58:44

58:44

In The Banality of Good: The UN’s Global Fight against Human Trafficking (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Lieba Faier examines why contemporary efforts to curb human trafficking have fallen so spectacularly short of their stated goals despite well-funded campaigns by the United Nations and its member-state governments. Focusing on Japan’s efforts…

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Kevin Nguyen, "My Documents" (One World, 2025) 48:23

3d ago48:23

48:23

Kevin Nguyen, My Documents (One World, 2025) Kevin Nguyen is the author of the novel New Waves, published in 2020. He is the features editor at The Verge, where he publishes award-winning stories about labor, business, and policing, and was previously a senior editor at GQ. He lives in Brooklyn. Recommended Books: Annelise Chen, Clam Down Tash Aw, …

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Geoffrey Wawro, "The Vietnam War: A Military History" (Basic Books, 2024) 1:12:52

20d ago1:12:52

1:12:52

The Vietnam War cast a shadow over the American psyche from the moment it began. In its time it sparked budget deficits, campus protests, and an erosion of US influence around the world. Long after the last helicopter evacuated Saigon, Americans have continued to battle over whether it was ever a winnable war. Based on thousands of pages of militar…

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Sven Trakulhun, "Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand" (U Hawaii Press, 2024) 40:54

25d ago40:54

40:54

Siam had been dealing with Christian missionaries for centuries, but from the 1830s a new wave of Protestant missionaries began to work in Siam, just as the European imperial powers were encroaching on Southeast Asia. They brought with them modern science and technology, which was of interest to the Siamese elite, but at the same time they challeng…

1
Xing Hang, "The Port: Hà Tiên and the Mo Clan in Early Modern Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 1:05:09

27d ago1:05:09

1:05:09

The Port (present-day Hà Tiên), situated in the Mekong River Delta and Gulf of Siam littoral, was founded and governed by the Chinese creole Mo clan during the eighteenth century and prospered as a free-trade emporium in maritime East Asia. Mo Jiu and his son, Mo Tianci, maintained an independent polity through ambiguous and simultaneous allegiance…

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Marine Environment Assessment in Palawan, Philippines 25:47

1M ago25:47

25:47

Dr Billy Haworth is a geographer interested in human-environment interactions, with expertise positioned at the intersection of human geography, critical GIS (geographic information systems), and international disaster studies. Billy’s work tries to better-understand experiences of, and adaptation to, environmental change and disruption, and often …

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Selda Altan, "Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochina Railway" (Stanford UP, 2024) 55:51

1M ago55:51

55:51

Chinese workers helped build the modern world. They labored on New World plantations, worked in South African mines, and toiled through the construction of the Panama Canal, among many other projects. While most investigations of Chinese workers focus on migrant labor, Chinese Workers of the World: Colonialism, Chinese Labor, and the Yunnan-Indochi…

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Gazi Mizanur Rahman, "In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 50:53

1M ago50:53

50:53

Gazi Mizanur Rahman’s In the Malay World: A Spatial History of a Bengali Transnational Community (Cambridge University Press, 2024) offers the first sustained historical study of Bengali migration to British Malaya from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth. Drawing on archival research in South and Southeast Asia, as well as oral histor…

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Qingfei Yin, "State Building in Cold War Asia: Comrades and Competitors on the Sino-Vietnamese Border" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 47:15

1M ago47:15

47:15

Departing from conventional studies of border hostility in inter-Asian relations, Yin Qingfei explores how two revolutionary states - China and Vietnam - each pursued policies that echoed the other and collaborated in extending their authority to the borderlands from 1949 to 1975. Making use of central and local archival sources in both Chinese and…

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Guo Quan Seng, "Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia" (SAPP, 2023) 55:53

1M ago55:53

55:53

In Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia (SAPP, 2023), Guo-Quan Seng provides a gendered history of settler Chinese community formation in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period (1816–1942). At the heart of this story lies the creolization of patrilineal Confucian marital and familial norms to the col…

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Zev J. Handel, "Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese" (U Washington Press, 2025) 45:26

2M ago45:26

45:26

While other ancient nonalphabetic scripts—Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Mayan hieroglyphs—are long extinct, Chinese characters, invented over three thousand years ago, are today used by well over a billion people to write Chinese and Japanese. In medieval East Asia, the written Classical Chinese language knit the region together in …

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Lian Sinclair, "Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations" (Manchester UP, 2024) 36:47

2M ago36:47

36:47

Why do multinational mining corporations use participation to undermine resistance? Do the struggles of local communities, activists and NGOs matter on a global scale? Why are there so many different global standards in mining? Undermining Resistance: The Governance of Participation by Multinational Mining Corporations (Manchester UP, 2024) develop…

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Talking Thai Politics: Reporting Thai Politics Internationally 29:53

2M ago29:53

29:53

What is it like to be a foreign correspondent in Thailand? How can someone develop sufficient understanding of this complex society to write effective news stories about Thai politics and business? In this podcast, Francesca Regalado, until recently a Bangkok correspondent for the Japanese-owned online news magazine Nikkei Asia, discusses her three…

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Nicholas Evan Sarantakes, "The Battle of Manila: Poisoned Victory in the Pacific War" (Oxford UP, 2025) 1:02:22

2M ago1:02:22

1:02:22

In our conversation about The Battle of Manila (Oxford University Press, 2025), Nicholas Evan Sarantakes explains how U.S. forces under General Douglas MacArthur won a climactic battle in the Pacific during World War II, but at a terrible cost. In 1945 the United States and Japan fought the largest and most devastating land battle of their war in t…

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Farouk Yahya, "Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts" (Brill, 2015) 32:26

2M ago32:26

32:26

Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts (Brill, 2015) offers an integrated study of the texts and images of illustrated Malay manuscripts on magic and divination from private and public collections in Malaysia, the UK and Indonesia. Containing some of the rare examples of Malay painting, these manuscripts provide direct evidence for t…

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Is Democracy and Peace Possible in Myanmar? A Conversation with Claire Smith 41:11

2M ago41:11

41:11

As the civil conflict in Myanmar passes its fourth anniversary, is this ethnically complex country any closer to a peaceful resolution of its internal conflict? Do opposition forces have a singular vision for what a post-conflict Myanmar might look like, or could the country simply break apart? Join Petra Alderman as she talks to Claire Smith about…

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Insects as a Natural and Cultural Resource across Southeast Asia 32:22

2M ago32:22

32:22

Every year, World Wildlife Conservation Day is observed on 4 December. It reminds us of the importance of protecting our biodiversity, a message that is all the more urgent in the face of polycrises intensifying across the globe. At the foundational level of our ecosystems lie insects, which provide invaluable services to maintain healthy environme…

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Georgina Banks, "Back to Bangka: Searching for the Truth about a Wartime Massacre" (Viking Australia, 2023) 49:22

2M ago49:22

49:22

Georgina Banks searches for the truth of what happened to her Great Aunt ‘Bud’, killed in the Second World War. Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942. Allied ships are evacuating thousands in flight from Singapore, the island having fallen to Japanese Imperial forces. Facing terrifying assaults by fighter planes, one ship, the Vyner Brooke, is badly bombe…

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Studying Myanmar in Times of Crises 27:56

3M ago27:56

27:56

How do we to study Myanmar when access to the country is so difficulty? In this episode, Kristina Kironska and Monika Verma from the Myanmar Studies Center at Palacký University Olomouc in the Czech Republic share their insights. Kristina Kironska is a socially engaged interdisciplinary academic with experience in election observation, research, an…

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Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller, "Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago" (U California Press, 2025) 1:09:04

3M ago1:09:04

1:09:04

Although the history of Indonesian music has received much attention from ethnomusicologists and Western composers alike, almost nothing has been written on the interaction of missionaries with local culture. Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago (U California Press, 2025) represents the first attempt to concentrate…

1
Tana Li, "A Maritime Vietnam: From Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century" (Cambridge UP, 2024) 46:23

3M ago46:23

46:23

When we think of Vietnamese history, we tend to think of plucky peasant guerillas fighting for their independence against French colonial rule or American imperialism - or even mighty China. In her new book, A Maritime Vietnam: From the Earliest Times to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2024), Li Tana challenges this powerful stereotype by rec…

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Syaifudin Zuhri, "Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition" (Leiden UP, 2022) 1:10:48

3M ago1:10:48

1:10:48

Syaifudin Zuhri’s book Wali Pitu and Muslim Pilgrimage in Bali, Indonesia: Inventing a Sacred Tradition (Leiden, 2022) is a detailed examination of the recent emergence of the Wali Pitu (“Seven Saints”) tradition in Bali, Indonesia. The study is a multi-sited ethnography of pilgrimage traditions to the grave sites of the Wali Pitu, which is a part …

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Sustainable Teamwork and Team Leadership in Southeast Asia 26:05

3M ago26:05

26:05

The workplace is forever facing new challenges. These challenges are also unique in the context of Southeast Asia. Effective team work and leadership are at the core of organisational success. Yet much remains under investigated in how we can best help organisations and their teams and leaders in navigating shifts in the business environment. To th…

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Andrew G. Walder, "Civil War in Guangxi: The Cultural Revolution on China's Southern Periphery" (Stanford UP, 2023) 1:25:41

4M ago1:25:41

1:25:41

Guangxi, a region on China's southern border with Vietnam, has a large population of ethnic minorities and a history of rebellion and intergroup conflict. In the summer of 1968, during the high tide of the Cultural Revolution, it became notorious as the site of the most severe and extensive violence observed anywhere in China during that period of …

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Ian G. Baird, "Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and Between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024) 45:49

4M ago45:49

45:49

Before the creation of the European colonial states in the nineteenth century, Southeast Asia had hundreds of royal families, large and small. Today, only a small number survive. In his book, Champassak Royalty and Sovereignty: Within and Between Nation-States in Mainland Southeast Asia (U Wisconsin Press, 2024), Ian Baird uncovers the history of o…

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Kishore Mahbubani, "Living the Asian Century: An Undiplomatic Memoir" (Public Affairs, 2024) 43:27

4M ago43:27

43:27

Kishore Mahbubani, longtime Singaporean diplomat and academic, opens his new memoir with a provocative line: “Blame it on the damn British.” Kishore, who later served as Singapore’s ambassador to the UN and founding dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, was born to poor migrants in Singapore, studied philosophy on a government scholarsh…

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First Podcast of the Year 2025! w/ Sunny 26:20

4M ago26:20

26:20

First Podcast of the Year 2025! With/ Sunny, we kick off the year with an exciting conversation about sales, strategy, and success! Sunny shares her expertise in closing deals and reflects on her biggest takeaways, offering valuable insights into the mobile home industry. From key trends to negotiation tactics, she breaks down what it takes to exce…

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David R. Saunders, "Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965" (Cornell UP, 2024) 1:06:59

4M ago1:06:59

1:06:59

In Chasing Archipelagic Dreams: The Expansion of Foreign Influence in Sabah amid the End of Empire, 1945–1965 (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. David R. Saunders demonstrates that the withdrawal of the British imperial state from Sabah did not result in the decolonization of the territory. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, international anti-co…

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Joshua Barker, "State of Fear: Policing a Postcolonial City" (Duke UP, 2024) 56:46

4M ago56:46

56:46

The relationship between fear people experience in their lives and the government often informs key questions about the rule of law and justice. In nations where the rule of law is unevenly applied, interpreting the people involved in its enforcement allows for contextualized understanding about why that unevenness occurs and is perpetuated. Joshua…

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Bertil Lintner, "The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar" (Oxford UP, 2024) 48:14

4M ago48:14

48:14

Four years ago, on Feb. 1 2021, the Burmese military overthrew the fledgling democratic government in the Southeast Asian country of Burma, officially known as Myanmar. That sparked a civil war that continues today–with neither the military junta nor the various rebel groups coming closer to victory. How did the country get here? Veteran Asia journ…

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Agricultural and Resource Economics in Vietnam 23:25

4M ago23:25

23:25

Agriculture remains a key sector of the economies of most Southeast Asian countries. It is supposed to provide nutritious, affordable, accessible and safe food to the people of SE Asia, and livelihood to more than 400 million farmers across the region. How is agriculture affected by climate change, and how can farmers cope with it? What is the rela…

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Magic, Death, and Necromancy with Justin McDaniel 58:39

5M ago58:39

58:39

**Warning: This episode contains potentially disturbing content!** On this episode of the Black Beryl, I sit down with Justin McDaniel, a scholar of Theravada Buddhist literature and art. Together we explore the darker side of Thai Buddhism, including meditation on decomposing bodies, fetus spirits, corpse oil, and the spectrum of white and black m…

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Talking Thai Politics: Chanintorn Pensute, The Cost of Politics in Thailand 31:28

5M ago31:28

31:28

How much does it cost to become an MP in Thailand? Is entering parliamentary politics prohibitively expensive for ordinary people? Has the rise of the Move Forward Party (now the People’s Party) changed the landscape as regards candidate selection and campaign finance? Or do well-connected members of local political dynasties still exert a dominant…

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Book Chat: The Life Story of Father Nguyễn, a Vietnamese Refugee Who Migrated to Taiwan, with Lin Shu-fen 36:45

5M ago36:45

36:45

In this podcast, the host, Lara Momesso, introduces a book she co-edited with Dr Polina Ivanova (University of Bremen) titled Refugees and Asylum Seekers in East Asia: Perspective from Japan and Taiwan (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024), and she interviews one of the authors of the book, Dr Shu-fen Lin, at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. In this …

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Katharine E. McGregor, "Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023) 48:53

5M ago48:53

48:53

The system of prostitution imposed and enforced by the Japanese military during its wartime occupation of several countries in East and Southeast Asia is today well-known and uniformly condemned. Transnational activist movements have sought to recognize and redress survivors of this World War II-era system, euphemistically known as "comfort women,"…

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Adrian de Leon, "Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America" (UNC Press, 2023) 1:15:36

6M ago1:15:36

1:15:36

In a book that pulls together both sides of the Pacific, Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America (UNC Press, 2023) asks the question: what if we look at Filipino history not from the cities or the imperial metropoles, but from the mountains and the countryside? Or put another way, from the "bundok," the Tagalog word for "mountain" which Am…

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Taomo Zhou, “Migration in the Time of Revolution: China, Indonesia and the Cold War” (Cornell UP, 2019) 1:11:30

6M ago1:11:30

1:11:30

If tales of China’s radical ‘opening up’ to the world over the last 30 years imply that the country was somehow ‘closed’ before this, then one need only think of Beijing’s dalliances with various potential socialist allies during the Cold War to dispel this impression. There is, moreover, another equally important case in which people linked to ‘Ch…

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China and the Indo-Pacific: Policies and Global Implications 29:49

6M ago29:49

29:49

Why has the Indo-Pacific become the pre-eminent theatre of global geo-strategic and geo-economic competition? What is the interest and role of different actors such as China, Russia, the US, the EU and NATO in the region? How are small island developing states such as the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, and Vanuatu affected by challeng…

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Juan José Rivas Moreno, "The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) 55:31

6M ago55:31

55:31

Many authors have written about the Manila Galleons, the massive ships that took goods back and forth between Acapulco and Manila, ferrying silver one way, and Chinese-made goods the other. But how did the Galleons actually work? Who paid for them? How did buyers and sellers negotiate with each other? Who set the rules? Why on earth did the shipper…

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Enze Han, "The Ripple Effect: China's Complex Presence in Southeast Asia" (Oxford UP, 2024) 27:33

6M ago27:33

27:33

Many studies of China's relations with and influence on Southeast Asia tend to focus on how Beijing has used its power asymmetry to achieve regional influence. Yet, scholars and pundits often fail to appreciate the complexity of the contemporary Chinese state and society, and just how fragmented, decentralized, and internationalized China is today.…

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Melissa Johnston, "Building Peace, Rebuilding Patriarchy: The Failure of Gender Interventions in Timor-Leste" (Oxford UP, 2023) 1:01:48

6M ago1:01:48

1:01:48

Over the two decades since the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, peacebuilding interventions around the globe have increasingly incorporated gender perspectives. These initiatives have used both development programs and gender mainstreaming to advance women's empowerment, with the aim of makin…

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Kevin D. Pham, "The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:11:01

6M ago1:11:01

1:11:01

In The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization (Oxford UP, 2024), Kevin D. Pham introduces Vietnamese political thought to debates in political theory, showing how Vietnamese thinkers challenge Western conventional wisdom. He traces an intergenerational debate among six influential figures in colonial Vietnam. These figures had …

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Threats to Academic Freedom in Thailand 17:16

6M ago17:16

17:16

What are the threats to academic freedom in Thailand? Why does the freedom of scholars and students matter for society at large and how are the attacks on Thai academia linked to the larger democracy movement in the region? Julia Olsson, a doctoral student at the Center for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University, talks to Dr. Karin Za…

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Nathan McGovern, "Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion" (Oxford UP, 2024) 1:07:20

6M ago1:07:20

1:07:20

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: l…

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Mattias Fibiger, "Suharto's Cold War: Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the World" (Oxford UP, 2023) 51:40

6M ago51:40

51:40

Conventional accounts of the Cold War focus on competition between the United States and Soviet Union as key to shaping world events. In focusing on the agency of Indonesia’s Suharto regime during its first decades, Matthias Fibiger casts new light on how the Cold War was experienced elsewhere. Based on extensive analysis of state archival records,…

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Investing in Southeast Asia: Key insights for Australian Researchers 30:00

6M ago30:00

30:00

Southeast Asia is of vital importance to Australia. As a nation, Australia’s prosperity, security and economic future are intimately connected to the region. According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, Southeast Asia is expected to be the fourth largest economy in the world by 2040, with its middle class already numbering close to 20…

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Pankaj Jain, "Visual Anthropology of Indian Films: Religious Communities and Cultural Traditions in Bollywood and Beyond" (Routledge, 2024) 28:04

7M ago28:04

28:04

Visual Anthropology of Indian Films: Religious Communities and Cultural Traditions in Bollywood and Beyond (Routledge, 2024) provides a unique insider’s look at the world’s largest film industry, now globally known as ‘Bollywood’ and challenges existing notions about Indian films. Indian films have been a worldwide phenomenon for decades. Chapters …

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Herald van der Linde, "Majapahit: Intrigue, Betrayal and War in Indonesia's Greatest Empire" (Monsoon Books, 2024) 47:39

7M ago47:39

47:39

Majapahit was Indonesia, and Southeast Asia’s, largest empire. Centered on the island of Java, Majapahit commanded loyalty from vassals across the archipelago: on Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and even the Malay Peninsula, including a tiny village called Tumasik–known today as Singapore. The empire lasted for around 230 years, from its founding in 129…