SSEAC Stories

From mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue to chronic bacterial infections such as yaws, Southeast Asia is home to a wide range of tropical diseases. For a long time, the arrival in the region of these and other dangerous tropical diseases was believed to be connected to the introduction of agriculture. But how long have these diseases really been around for? How are they connected to the region’s fluctuating social and environmental conditions? And how have they impacted the human populations of Southeast Asia over time?

Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, bioarchaeologist Dr Melandri Vlok sheds light on the complex science of paleoepidemiology and its use of advanced analytical practices such as DNA ancestry, skeletal studies, and teeth calculus to uncover ancient stories of illness and disease. She explains that far from being mere remnants of the past, archaeological human remains can help us understand the evolution and spread of pathogens, and inform strategies to curb the spread of infectious diseases in human populations.

About Melandri Vlok:

Dr Melandri Vlok is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Melandri specialises in palaeopathology/ bioarchaeology and researches the implications for migration and trade on the presence of infectious and nutritional diseases in past populations in Asia. Melandri's work, funded by grant bodies including National Geographic and the Royal Society of New Zealand, has involved the analysis of human skeletal remains from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand and the Philippines. She is also involved with repatriation efforts focused on returning Māori and Moriori ancestral remains to iwi and imi (tribes) in New Zealand.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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In 2021, a team of divers sponsored by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute surveyed two historic shipwrecks discovered in the Singapore Strait, working for several months to bring their submerged cargos to the surface. Chinese trade ceramics found in these cargos date their demise to the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries – pivotal moments in the history of the globe-spanning China Trade. The most intriguing aspect of this salvage operation, however, is the discovery in the remains of the older vessel of the most substantial cargo of Yuan-dynasty blue-and-white porcelain yet found in Southeast Asian waters.

Joining Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, Dr Alex Burchmore argues that these discoveries provide valuable insights into the complex interactions between China and Southeast Asia, allowing us to reposition Southeast Asia at the centre of historic trade narratives. Through the international trade of Chinese ceramics, Dr Burchmore invites us to reimagine the past, rethinking traditional narratives of Chineseness across the region, as well as Australia’s identity in the Asia-Pacific.

About Alex Burchmore:

Dr Alex Burchmore is an art historian specialising in the study of Chinese and Southeast Asian art, past and present, with a particular focus on ceramics, trade and exchange, and the interweaving of the personal and material. Alex received his PhD from the Australian National University in 2019 and joined the University of Sydney’s Museum and Heritage Studies department in 2021. His first book, New Export China: Translations Across Time and Place in Contemporary Chinese Porcelain Art (University of California Press, 2023), traces the extent to which artists within and beyond China have used porcelain to shape their personal, historical, and cultural identities, from the 1990s to the present. His recent publications include a study of the ‘material Chineseness’ of ink and porcelain in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art and a chapter dedicated to the ‘fugitive luxury’ of contemporary Chinese ceramics in The Allure of Matter: Materiality Across Chinese Art (University of Chicago Press, 2021).

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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Today, oral histories of everyday Singaporeans are more widely circulated in the nation’s mediascape than ever before. At first glance, storytelling in Singapore appears to have lost its monolithic quality, becoming diffuse and diversified. But as Dr Cheng Nien Yuan argues, Singapore has become a Storytelling State, marketing bite-sized pieces of consumable lives as authentic windows to the private self. The result is the use of personal stories within the neoliberal public sphere, mirroring a growing global phenomenon. To tell this story, Dr Natali Pearson is joined by Dr Cheng Nien Yuan to discuss her award-winning research that charts Singapore’s development into a storytelling state over the last decade.

About Cheng Nien Yuan:

Cheng Nien Yuan is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney’s School of Literature, Art and Media, as well as the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Her research centres around the politics and poetics of storytelling in Singapore. She obtained her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies in 2020 at Sydney University. Her thesis titled ‘The Storytelling State: Performing Life Histories in Singapore’ was awarded the 2020 John Legge Best Thesis in Asian Studies Prize by the Asian Studies Association of Australia. She has published in the journals Studies in Theatre and Performance (2021), Performance Paradigm (2018), and the Oral History Review (2017). She is also a dramaturg and performance-maker. Cheng is currently based in the Intercultural Theatre Institute in Singapore, where she researches their pedagogy and practice.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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In April 2021, three months into Myanmar’s most recent and increasingly more violent coup d’état, local residents managed to obstruct the junta by refusing to cooperate with military appointed officials. The junta had attempted to replace all local level administrators with those loyal to the military. But in one town in Shan State, the junta-appointed administrators were socially ostracized by the community to the point of resigning. With no one daring to take their place, every ward administrator position in town went unfilled. Across the country, Myanmar residents supported each other, and striking civil servants, by setting up donations of basic foodstuffs such as rice, oil, and onions.

In this episode, Dr Natali Pearson is joined by Dr Jayde Lin Roberts to discuss how these locally initiated direct actions are part and parcel of the ordinary practices of everyday life in Myanmar. In providing a space for informal, intimate, and relational economies, nalehmu not only fosters community-building, says Dr Roberts, but it also has the power to disrupt conventional power structures.

About Jayde Roberts:

Dr Jayde Lin Roberts is a senior lecturer in the School of Built Environment at UNSW Sydney and an interdisciplinary scholar of Urban Studies and Southeast Asian Studies. Her research on Myanmar focuses on urban informality, heritage-making, and the influence of transnational networks. Her monograph, Mapping Chinese Rangoon: Place and Nation among the Sino-Burmese was published by the University of Washington Press in 2016. She was a Fulbright US Scholar in Yangon, Myanmar between 2016-2018.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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Southeast Asia is the most tectonically and geologically active region on Earth. These processes have enriched the mountains and basins with world-famous mineral and energy resources, fresh water, and highly productive soils. However, the same geological processes are responsible for incredible destruction – from the 1991 Mount Pinatubo volcanic eruption in the Philippines to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. These natural hazards, coupled with the effects of human-induced climate change, are driving significant change. To talk us through these changes, Dr Sabin Zahirovic joins Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories, exposing how climate change is amplifying existing vulnerabilities in Southeast Asia. He explains how understanding past and current geological process can help us reduce risks from natural hazards like earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, but also address the huge challenges faced by growing populations and increased vulnerabilities resulting from climate change.

About Sabin Zahirovic:

Dr Sabin Zahirovic is a Robinson Fellow in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney. Sabin's research focuses on global plate tectonics and mantle evolution, and particularly for the Tethyan and Asian regions. He completed his PhD titled “Post-Pangea global plate kinematics and geodynamic implications for Southeast Asia” at the University of Sydney in 2015. From 2015 to 2020, he led the Papua New Guinea research stream of the ARC ITRH Basin GENESIS Hub at the University of Sydney. He now leads the Tectonics and Geodynamics stream of a collaborative industry project with BHP. In 2020, Sabin was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) to explore the rise and demise of massive reefs and carbonate platforms on Australian continental margins. Sabin is a past recipient of the GSA Voisey Medal, the Deep Carbon Observatory Emerging Leader Award, and the AIPS NSW Tall Poppy award.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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On 16 August 2021, Muhyiddin Yaseen resigned as Prime Minister of Malaysia, with Ismail Sabri Yaakub sworn in as the new Prime Minister a week later, making him Malaysia’s third Prime Minister in two years. This marked the return to power of UMNO, or the United Malays National Organisation, and the graft-tainted coalition that had been ousted from power in 2018. Meanwhile, another former Prime Minister, Najib Razak, is eyeing a return to Parliament, notwithstanding a conviction and 12-year prison sentence for abuse of power and ongoing trials for corruption. His wife Rosmah Mansur is also now facing three corruption charges.

Associate Professor Salim Farrar joins Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories to talk about corruption and the politics of public prosecution in Malaysia, surveying the landscape of law and justice in Malaysia now and beyond, through a re-evaluation of Vision 2020.

About Salim Farrar:

Salim Farrar is Director of Islamic Law, an Associate Director of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney and an Associate Professor in the Sydney Law School. He researches in Comparative and Islamic Laws, with focuses on law and development in predominantly Muslim states, the legal accommodation of Muslim minorities and the Malaysian legal system (especially in criminal justice). His most recent published research explores law and justice in Malaysia post the 2018 GE14. He is the joint editor (with Paul Subramaniam) of ‘Law and Justice in Malaysia: 2020 and Beyond’ (2021, Thomson Reuters), editor of ‘Law and Development in the Islamic World’ Law and Development Review (Special Edition), Vol 13 (2) (2020) and joint author (with Ghena Krayem) of ‘Accommodating Muslims under Common Law’ (2017, 2018, Routledge).

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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Cambodia’s Tonle Sap is the largest inland lake in Southeast Asia. Each year, during the monsoon, this freshwater lake experiences an incredible hydrological phenomenon, in which it is inundated with swelling waters from the Mekong River, causing it to rise by up to tenfold in some places, before returning to its pre-monsoon level as the dry season returns. But Tonle Sap is facing a triple environmental threat: climate change, the damming of the Mekong River, and over-fishing, with devastating impact not only on the wildlife, but also on local floating village communities.

To share more, Dr Josephine Gillespie joins Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories and invites us to rethink global environmental protection regimes in Southeast Asia. Taking Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake as a case-study, she argues that in order to maintain the ecological, cultural, and economic integrity of the most important river and delta system in the world, environmental management projects and policies must take into account people-place dynamics and local livelihoods.

About Josephine Gillespie:

Dr Josephine Gillespie is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geosciences, Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney. She researches environmental regulation and people-place dynamics across the region, with a particular focus on Cambodia. Jo’s research projects have focused on protected areas, especially the management of world heritage places and wetlands. She is the author of Protected Areas: A Legal Geography Approach (2020) and a co-editor of Legal Geography: Perspectives and Methods (2020). Jo has published widely about environmental management in the Asia-Pacific.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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In September-October 2021, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts exploring the role that research plays in understanding and advocating for human rights in Southeast Asia.

For the final episode in the series, Dr Thushara Dibley is joined by Emeritus Professor Peter Windsor who brings to light how research improving animal health and production is intrinsically linked to human rights issues. Reflecting on his extensive field-based research on transboundary livestock disease in the Greater Mekong Region, he argues that through training on biosecurity practices, animal vaccination programs and nutritional interventions, rural households were able to prevent disease transmission and increase their livestock productivity, making farm production more sustainable. With higher income levels, local families’ livelihoods were improved. This enables better access to human rights, such as access to safe housing, access to healthcare, and access to knowledge and education, amongst others.

About Peter Windsor:

Peter Windsor is Professor Emeritus in the University of Sydney’s School of Veterinary Science since 2014. Peter worked extensively for NSW Agriculture in several roles including diagnostic pathology and livestock disease research and management. In 1998, he undertook a 19-month appointment to the Food Agriculture Organisation in Naga City, in the Bicol region of the Philippines, that eventually led to the successful eradication of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD). Peter joined the University of Sydney in 2002, where he had a diverse range of teaching, research and administrative roles. His current research portfolio includes applied field-based projects on ruminant health and production problems in Southeast Asia that aim to assist FMD control. He continues his field studies on improving food security in developing countries and animal welfare in production systems, as well as reproductive, congenital, neurological and genetic disease research.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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In September-October 2021, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts exploring the role that research plays in understanding and advocating for human rights in Southeast Asia.

Maternal and child health is the cornerstone of a life lived healthily. Healthy women grow healthy children, who then go on to have healthy children themselves. In resource poor settings, healthy families can influence the wider community. In this episode, Dr Thushara Dibley is joined by Associate Professor Camille Raynes-Greenow to discuss how research focussed on interventions in the (mostly) perinatal period can improve outcomes for women and children. Focusing primarily on Myanmar, Associate Professor Raynes-Greenow highlights the universal appeal of research that aims to improve maternal and newborn health, but also reveals that it can encounter challenges in contexts of severe wealth inequalities and political censorship.

About Camille Raynes-Greenow:

Camille is a perinatal epidemiologist, at The Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney. Her research aims to reduce the burden of perinatal morbidity and mortality and improve the health of women and babies particularly of those most vulnerable. Camille was part of the research team that first identified the risk of maternal supine sleeping for stillbirth in Australia. The project funded through the CRE that Camille is working on, is aiming to improve health literacy around reducing stillbirth risk for women not born in Australia. Camille is also leading a large cluster randomised controlled trial in Bangladesh of an intervention to reduce household air pollution to assess the effect on pregnancy outcomes, particularly stillbirth and neonatal mortality. Camille is Director of the Masters of Global Health program, and co-leads the Global Health and Nutrition Research Collaboration in the Sydney School of Public Health at The University of Sydney.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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In September-October 2021, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts exploring the role that research plays in understanding and advocating for human rights in Southeast Asia. In the second episode, Dr Thushara Dibley talks with Professor Nick Enfield about how the field of linguistics intersects with human rights. They discuss some of the impacts that major hydro-electric dam projects in Laos have had on local communities, not just in changing day-to-day life, but in decreasing interethnic interactions, thereby eroding multiculturalism and multilingualism. In disrupting local indigenous exchanges, Professor Enfield argues that large development projects risk impeding the transmission of significant cultural knowledge, including traditional knowledge of biodiversity and environmental sustainability. The study of languages thus becomes a tool for understanding a broader set of human rights, from cultural to environmental rights.

About Nick Enfield:

Nick Enfield is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney and director of the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre, and the Sydney Centre for Language Research. He is head of a Research Excellence Initiative on The Crisis of Post-Truth Discourse. His research on language, culture, cognition and social life is based on long term field work in mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His recent books include The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Mainland Southeast Asian Languages: A Concise Typological Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Nick has published widely in linguistics, anthropology, and cognitive science venues, and has written for The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Wall Street Journal, and Science. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Royal Society of New South Wales, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

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