Speakers for the Decolonizing Southeast Asia Studies Conference on 17-19 July 2025 at Chiang Mai University will include:

Introductory address from Dr. Ian Baird from the University of Wisconsin, Madison on “Decolonizing Southeast Asian Studies: Different perspectives and approaches”:

There is a long history of efforts to decolonize Southeast Asian Studies. However, the positionalities and geographical locations of scholars have variously affected the approaches taken. In this introductory presentation, I review some of the perspectives that exist regarding this important topic, with the goal of illuminating the landscape of possibilities associated with the decolonization of Southeast Asian Studies. I ultimately argue that there are a wide range of ways that scholars can contribute to the decolonization of Southeast Asian Studies, and that it is important to adopt a variety of approaches and perspectives to effectively do so.

Keynote address from Dr. Willem van Schendel from the University of Amsterdam & International Institute of Social History, “Overcoming marginality: The decolonizing force of Zo studies”:

The Zo lands straddle the borders of Myanmar, India, and Bangladesh – long closed to outside researchers. As a result, “Zo studies” are dominated by local scholars and represent an “Indigenous minority” trajectory of intellectual decolonization that can be a model for other subfields of Southeast Asian studies.

And a second keynote address from Asst. Prof. Dr. Thiti Jamkajornkeiat from the University of Victoria, “Can There Be Southeast Asians in Southeast Asian Studies – Redux”:

A call for decolonizing disciplines everywhere takes a specific form that corresponds to each field’s colonial legacies. For Southeast Asian studies, specifically, I argue that the most immediate task is to reconstruct the field’s repertoire that comprehensively builds upon the conceptual contributions of Southeast Asian thinkers. As Ariel Heryanto shows in his famous article, “Can there be Southeast Asians in Southeast Asian Studies?” the core problematic for decolonizing Southeast Asian studies lies in the subordinate status of Southeast Asians in Southeast Asianist knowledge production—a condition Syed Hussein Alatas calls “intellectual imperialism.” This presentation ruminates on ways to bring Southeast Asians back into the field and illuminates what “Southeast Asian studies for Southeast Asians” might look like.

Willem van Schendel (University of Amsterdam & International Institute of Social History) works in the fields of history, anthropology, and sociology of Asia. His research interests include borderlands, more-than-human history, indigo, labour history, and photography. Recent books related to Southeast Asian studies include Entangled Lives: Human-Animal-Plant Histories of the Eastern Himalayan Triangle (Cambridge University Press, 2022; with Joy L.K. Pachuau); Flows and Frictions in Trans-Himalayan Spaces: Histories of Networking and Border Crossing (Amsterdam University Press, 2022; with Gunnel Cederlöf); and The Camera as Witness: A Social History of Mizoram (Cambridge University Press, 2015; with Joy L.K. Pachuau). Most of his publications can be downloaded here

Thiti Jamkajornkeiat is Assistant Professor of Global Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Victoria. He serves as a board member of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society and is an editorial member of positions: asia critique collective. His essays and interviews appeared in Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, Spectre, Haymarket Books, positions:politics, Verge, and upcoming in Critical Times. His first book project charts an intellectual history of and develops a political theory from left internationalism in Indonesia during the Bandung era through the intertwined circuits of third worldism and minor communism.

Ian Baird is a Professor of Geography and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on political ecology, nature-society relations, the Mekong River Basin, land tenure issues, Indigenous peoples and the histories of marginalized peoples in Southeast Asia. Most of his research is focused on Laos, Thailand and northeastern Cambodia.