SSEAC Stories

The COVID-19 virus has brought the spotlight to respiratory health. Over the past year, we have become more aware than ever of cough and cold-like symptoms, fevers, feeling tired, shortness of breath and any other indicators that our immune system is fighting off an infection. But COVID-19 is not the only health condition to affect the respiratory system. Tuberculosis is one of many infectious bacterial diseases that share a number of symptoms with COVID-19, and can also result in death.

Professor Gregory Fox talked to Dr Natali Pearson about his work on infectious lung disease in Vietnam, and how his research is contributing to better respiratory health outcomes throughout the country.

Disclaimer: This podcast was recorded in February 201 and the COVID-19 situation in Vietnam has since changed.

About Professor Gregory Fox:

Greg is a respiratory physician, epidemiologist and clinical trialist committed to using research to improve health care among disadvantaged populations. He is clinical Academic Lead (Research) for the Faculty of Medicine and Health at Cumberland Campus. Greg's research interests include the epidemiology of infectious disease in resource-limited setting, cluster randomised trials, clinical trials and digital technologies to support health care. He also has interests in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, translation of evidence into policy, decision analysis and capacity building in research.

You can follow Greg on Twitter @foxsimile.

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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Australia has always been multilingual. Yet English language sources have dominated political and popular discourses over the last few centuries, overshadowing the significant contribution made by other languages and cultures in shaping Australian history and identity.

Professor Adrian Vickers spoke to Dr Natali Pearson about his work as part of an ambitious new Australian Research Council Discovery Project that seeks to investigate and document how speakers of (mainly non-Indigenous) languages apart from English have recorded and represented Australia. As Professor Vickers explains, these languages include Indonesian, in which he specialises, as well as many other Asian and European languages. In examining Australia’s history from non-English perspectives, the project challenges dominant narratives of what being Australian means and asks how language both shapes and reflects notions of belonging in an Australian context.

In this podcast, Professor Adrian Vickers delves into Australia’s migrant and settler history to highlight the importance of language diversity, narrating countless tales of cross-cultural exchanges and how they have informed the Australian past.

About Professor Adrian Vickers:

Adrian researches and publishes on the cultural history of Southeast Asia. He has held a series of Australian Research Council grants (Discovery and Linkage), the most recent looking at modern and contemporary Indonesian art, Cold War history, and labour and industry in Southeast Asia. As part of a linkage grant on the history of Balinese painting, he created a virtual museum, continuing previous pioneering work in eResearch and teaching. His books include the highly popular Bali: A Paradise Created (2012), The Pearl Frontier: Indonesian Labor and Indigenous Encounters in Australia's Northern Trading Network (2015, with Associate Professor Julia Martínez, funded by an ARC Discovery Project Grant), A History of Modern Indonesia (2013) and Balinese Art: Paintings and Drawings of Bali, 1800-2010 (2012). Adrian is frequently asked to comment on Indonesia and Australian-Indonesian relations for national and international media.

You can follow Adrian on Twitter: @AdrianVickers5.

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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Fungal infections are amongst the leading infectious disease killers globally. They result in more deaths than malaria, and almost as many as tuberculosis. However, they are often overlooked, and receive less research attention and funding than viral or bacterial infections. Over the past decade, this has started to change as the emergence of resistance in fungal pathogens has caused global alarm. New, resistant organisms have emerged, and old familiar ones have become harder to treat - agricultural antifungal use is thought to be driving these trends.

Dr Justin Beardsley spoke to Dr Natali Pearson about the problem of resistant fungal infections in Vietnam, describing how agricultural practices are contributing, and what can be done to mitigate the risks.

Justin is a New Zealand trained infectious disease specialist and clinical researcher. From 2012 to 2017, he was based in the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, where he was focused on fungal infections. There, he conducted a multinational randomised clinical trial into adjunctive steroid therapy for Cryptococcal Meningitis in Southeast Asia and Africa, alongside other work on the epidemiology of fungal infections, immune responses in Cryptococcal Meningitis, pharmacokinetics of anti-fungal drugs in the central nervous system, and temporal trends in cryptococcal drug susceptibility. His current research focuses on the emergence of anti-fungal drug resistance, especially in Southeast Asia.

You can follow Justin on Twitter: @_jbeardsley_.

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 13 January 2020, Thailand confirmed the first known case of COVID-19 outside of China. As one of the world's most popular tourism destinations, with the majority of its travellers coming from China, this news came as no surprise. One year on, COVID-19 cases and related deaths have remained remarkably low in Thailand, and the country’s management of the pandemic has been hailed as a striking success. So what's the secret behind Thailand's COVID-19 response?

Dr Anjalee Cohen joined Dr Natali Pearson to explore the many factors that have contributed to Thailand’s success in managing COVID-19 thus far, including the country’s long history of public healthcare, the overturning of medical elitism, the influence of certain cultural practices, and the critical role played by Thailand’s village health volunteers.

Anjalee Cohen is a senior lecturer in the anthropology department at the University of Sydney. She joined the department in 2010 following research positions at the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney, and the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales. She specialises in medical anthropology and Northern Thailand. She has published on youth mental healthcare experiences in Australia, methamphetamine use among northern Thai youth, as well as northern Thai youth subcultures, including violent youth gangs. She is author of Youth Culture and Identity in Northern Thailand: Fitting in and sticking out (Routledge 2020), which explores how young people in urban Chiang Mai construct a sense of community and identity at the intersection of global capitalism, national ideologies and local culture. Her current research focuses on the role and success of Thailand’s village health volunteers in preventing and controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

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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From drugs, communism and terrorism, and now the COVID-19 pandemic, the Philippines under Duterte can been characterised as a rolling series of security threats. To manage these threats, the Duterte administration has relied heavily on the military. So what is the role of the military in Philippine politics under Duterte? How does it compare with the role of the military in other Southeast Asian countries? And what does it mean for democracy in the Philippines?

Professor Aries Arugay joined Dr Natali Pearson on SSEAC Stories to discuss civil-military relations and the erosion of democracy in the Philippines under the Duterte presidency.

Aries A. Arugay is Professor of Political Science and Associate Dean for Research, Extension, and Publications in the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy from the University of the Philippines in Diliman. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Asian Politics & Policy, an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Policy Studies Organization. His main research interests are comparative democratization, civil-military relations, ASEAN regionalism, and Philippine foreign and security policy. Since 2014, he has also been a regular lecturer and trainer of military and police officials of the Philippines in institutions such as the National Defense College, Command and General Staff College, and the Philippine Public Safety College.

You can follow Aries on Twitter @ariesarugay.

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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For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.

In our final episode in this mini-series, Dr Thushara Dibley speaks with Dr Elisabeth Kramer about her collaboration with Indonesian partners on tobacco control in Indonesia, the challenges she encountered as an Early Career Researchers, and how she shifted her approach to academic research to focus on positive impact on real-world problems in Southeast Asia.

Disclaimer: This interview was recorded in December 2020. Some of the data mentioned may not be up to date.

Dr Elisabeth Kramer is Deputy Director at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on the intersection between discourse, identity and politics in Indonesia. Current research interests include corruption, the tobacco industry and political empowerment for people with disabilities.

You can follow Elisabeth on Twitter @liskramer.

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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For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.

For our fourth episode in this mini-series, Dr Thushara Dibley speaks with Dr Fiona Lee about a unique research project she's been managing on cultural archives in Malaysia, where her research partner is also the subject of her research.

In the podcast, Fiona mentioned that the ad was published in the mid-20th century; however, the correct date is 1934, as can be seen on the Malaysia Design Archive website: https://www.malaysiadesignarchive.org/advertisement-tiger-beer/.

Dr Fiona Lee is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney. She researches and teaches in the fields of postcolonial studies, 20th and 21st-century literature, and cultural studies. Her research explores the history of decolonisation and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, with a particular interest in Malaysia and Singapore, through the prisms of literature and the arts. She earned her PhD in English and a Women’s Studies Certificate at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2014. At CUNY, she taught literature and writing courses, as well as participated in various digital teaching and learning initiatives. From 2014-2016, she held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cultural Studies at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.

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

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.

In the third episode in this mini-series, Dr Thushara Dibley interviewed Associate Professor Jeffrey Neilson about a new collaborative project investigating sustainable agricultural production in Vietnam. He talks about the challenges of building relationships with partners you’ve never met before, beyond language barriers and closed international borders, and how this has had unexpectedly positive consequences for the project.

Jeff's research focuses on economic geography, environmental governance and rural development in Southeast Asia, with specific area expertise on Indonesia. Jeff’s research interests are diverse and include issues of food security and food sovereignty, the global coffee industry, the global cocoa-chocolate industry, agrarian reform movements, sustainable livelihoods and alternative measures of well-being, agroecology, and environmental governance. He is currently leading a five-year research project examining the livelihood impacts of farmer engagement in value chain interventions across Indonesia. This research is contributing to cutting-edge international debates on the development effects of sustainability and certification programs, Geographical Indications and direct trade initiatives.

Jeff is a fluent Indonesian language speaker and has conducted extended periods of ethnographic field research in the Toraja region of Sulawesi, where he pursues research in cultural change, landscape history, the ceremonial economy and oral poetic traditions.

You can follow Jeffrey on Twitter @JeffreySydney.

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

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.

In the second episode in this mini-series, Dr Thushara Dibley interviewed Professor Michael Dibley about a collaborative project looking at food security and malnutrition in Myanmar - a country he had previously never worked in before, and where he had to rely on local partners to navigate an array of complex challenges.

Michael Dibley is a Professor in Global Public Health Nutrition and an internationally renowned nutritional epidemiologist with major research outputs and translation over the past 30 years. Professor Dibley is Co-Director of the Global Health & Nutrition Research Collaboration (GHNRC) at the Sydney School of Public Health and the founding member of The South Asia Infant Feeding Research Network (SAIFRN). Professor Dibley’s contributions have illuminated the double burden of under and over-nutrition prevalent in many countries across the Asia-Pacific. He has conducted many large multi-centre trials and has in-depth knowledge of the conduct and analysis of large-scale community-based cluster RCTs. He has also directed research assessing the magnitude of childhood and adolescent obesity, micronutrient deficiencies in women and children, infant and young child feeding practices, and a wide range of associated environmental, social and behavioural risks factors and their effects on health in South and Southeast Asia and Africa.

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

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For the next five weeks, SSEAC Stories will be hosting a mini-series of podcasts on research partnerships in Southeast Asia. In the context of COVID-19, it has become clear that working in partnership is a critical part of being able to do research in Southeast Asia. Through interviews with University of Sydney academics working across all disciplines and at all stages in their careers, this mini-series will highlight strategies that our members have used to build and sustain partnerships with collaborators in Southeast Asia.

In our first episode, Dr Thushara Dibley speaks with Associate Professor Jenny-Ann Toribio about a ten-year long research collaboration that she’s developed with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Timor-Leste to combat animal diseases.

Jenny-Ann is Associate Professor in Epidemiology at the University of Sydney. Jenny-Ann has conducted extensive applied research focused on biosecurity, emergency animal diseases and zoonoses in Australia, Indonesia, Philippines and Timor-Leste. Recent research of note in Australia includes evaluation of avian influenza risk for commercial chicken farms in New South Wales and risk awareness and risk mitigation practices among horse owners in relation to Hendra virus. Further afield, she has led collaborative research in eastern Indonesia on the evaluation of the risk for highly pathogenic avian influenza and classical swine fever with poultry and pig movement respectively; in Timor Leste on smallholder pig production and health; and in Fiji on evaluation of zoonotic tuberculosis risk for dairy farmers.

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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