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The claim to moderate or modernist Islam in Indonesia is particularly contentious today, as these labels participate in the global politics of identity for Muslims past and present. Who gets to claim to be representative of an Islam that is modernist, progressive, or tolerant? What constitutes a traditionalist Islamic orientation? And why and for whom do these distinctions matter? In her new book Theologies of Remembering: Modernity, Ambiguity, and Transcendence in Islamic Indonesia (U California Press, 2026), Dr. Verena Meyer raises these questions in an ethnographic study of two major Indonesian Muslim organizations based in Yogyakarta: the Muhammadiyya and the Nahdlatul Ulama.  Within a larger global discourse of Muslim belonging, and in particular anxieties about the growth of so-called radical and intolerant Islam, the labels given to these organizations (traditionalist and modernist) take on new importance. It is the question of categories—what defines them, what work they do, and how they change—that Meyer investigates through interviews with organization members, study of intellectual and genealogical traditions, and observations of institutional building within the groups. Engaging the field of memory studies and critical debates about the role of remembering and commemorating the past through history and heritage, Meyer argues that the terms and connotations of categories like modernist and traditional have shifted as Indonesian Muslims recall their formative pasts in ways that involve, and not preclude, ambiguity and contradiction. As such the book participates in debates within Islamic studies about the role of paradox and contradiction in Muslim historical and theological frameworks, constructed within temporal shifts in agency and power. A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Dr. Verena Meyer is Assistant Professor of Islam in South and Southeast Asia at Leiden University (NL).  Dr. Jaclyn Michael is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (USA).  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What happens to foreign aid (and to women’s status) when the global development landscape shifts away from U.S. dominance? In this episode of International Horizons, John Torpey speaks with sociologist Mary-Collier Wilks about her book Reimagining Aid: Foreign Donors, Women’s Health, and New Paths for Development in Cambodia (Stanford UP, 2026). They discuss the contrasting approaches of U.S., Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese donors, the rise of competing regional models of development, and what the changing aid landscape means for gender equality and local actors in Cambodia. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of Talking Thai Politics, Professor Tyrell Haberkorn discusses her new book, Dictatorship on Trial: Coups and the Future of Justice in Thailand (Stanford UP, 2024). This book examines five court cases brought during the regime of the National Council for Peace and order, involving protests and human rights. It features alternative judgments by the “Court of the People” which are offered alongside critical discussions of the actual case outcomes.  Tyrell Haberkorn is a prominent scholar of Thailand, with interests in state violence and dissident cultural politics from the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 to the present. She is currently Plaenert-Bascom Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison  Her previous books are In Plain Sight: Impunity and Human Rights in Thailand (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018) and Revolution Interrupted: Farmers, Students, Law and Violence in Northern Thailand. (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011).  Duncan McCargo is President’s Chair in Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University.   Talking Thai Politics brings crafted conversations about the politics of Thailand to a global audience. Created by the Generation Thailand project at Nanyang Technological University, the podcast is hosted by Duncan McCargo. Our production assistant is Shermaine Lau.  Website: here  You might also enjoy these related podcasts: A 2021 conversation with Tyrell Haberkorn discussing this book as a work in progress: here Duncan McCargo talking about his book Fighting for Virtue: Politics and Justice in Thailand (Cornell 2019). here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Conceived in 1950, the Colombo Plan for Co-operative Development in South and Southeast Asia was a unique experiment in foreign relations. Meeting annually across what we now know as the 'Indo-Pacific', talented administrators facilitated foreign aid provision, and promoted development fuelled state-making, internationalism and experimental regionalism across postwar Asia.   In The Colombo Plan: Development Internationalism in Cold War Asia (Cambridge UP, 2025), Professor David Lowe argues that this new setting and dynamic international cast created an unusually productive diplomatic environment of development internationalism. The Colombo Plan did not escape power politics or Cold War divisions. However, it did run according to its own rhythm, and, unlike other experiments, it endured, continuing today in much reduced form.  This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Six great Asian river systems have their origins in the Tibetan glacial region: the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, the Salween, the Mekong, the Red and the Yangtse ('BISMRY'). Together they comprise the largest concentration of fresh water on the planet outside of the polar regions, and they support one third of humanity. In the age of imperialism, Western colonial powers dreamed of harnessing the economic potential of these great rivers, as if an ‘empire of men’ challenged a much older ‘empire of rivers’. This is the theme of Iftekhar Iqbal’s conceptually ambitious new book, The Range of the River: A Riverine History of Empire across China, India, and Southeast Asia, just published by Stanford University Press this year. This neo-Braudellian history of Asia’s great rivers encourages us to re-examine our thinking about the impact of imperialism, historical agency, Cold War regional categories of ‘South Asia’, ‘Southeast Asia’, and ‘East Asia’, into which the study of Asian history is usually divided, and even the humble mule, which played a crucial role in connecting this mountainous, watery region.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Increasingly, it seems like the corporate names that dominate headlines are much more diverse than they used to be. Samsung, TSMC, and SK Hynix. Alibaba and Tencent; BYD and DeepSeek. Sea and Grab.  For twenty-five years, it seems like every major technology was American . That assumption is now under strain as innovation spreads from one place to many.  Mehran Gul tries to map out this new network in his book The New Geography of Innovation: The Global Contest for Breakthrough Technologies (Simon and Schuster, 2026). From China's startlingly messy AI ecosystem to Singapore's government-led innovation, from South Korea's decades-old conglomerates still at the frontier to India's world-class talent that too often works abroad; from Europe's struggle to hold on to its best companies, to the deeper role of the state everywhere—including in Silicon Valley—and why the United States, far from declining, is extending its lead into a genuinely bipolar technological order. Mehran is a winner of the Financial Times/McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize. He attended Yale where he was a Fulbright Scholar, Fox International Fellow, and Teaching Fellow. He has been a Lead for the Digital Transformation of Industries at the World Economic Forum and an expert on Higher Education, Entrepreneurship, and Industrial Policy at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. Before Yale, he studied at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He has been a visiting scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a Fellow with the Acumen Fund.  You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The New Geography of Innovation. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

WWII in East Timor: An Australian Army Site and Travel Guide (2/2 Commando Association of Australia, 2024) is an overdue addition to the history of a campaign that remains surprisingly little known in Australia, despite its significance to Australia’s part in the war. Working district by district – from Dili south to Aileu, Ainaro and Manufahi, west to Liquiçá, Ermera, Bobonaro, Cova Lima and Oecusse, and east to Manatuto, Baucau, Viqueque and Lautem – this book offers a fresh, site-based perspective on the Second World War in East Timor (Timor-Leste). The book’s starting point is the “Gazetteer of Towns and Villages in Portuguese Timor”, compiled in 1943 by the Allied Geographical Section. With meticulous precision, Willis revisits these sites and adds GPS coordinates, maps, wartime photographs by Sergeant Keith Davis, contemporary photographs taken at the same locations, and paintings by Australian war artist Charles Bush. These are supplemented with accounts from the Australian War Memorial and National Archives, Trove, unit and campaign histories, Timorese testimony, and new material from sources in Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and Tetum. In doing so, it brings together diverse sources – archival, oral and site-based – that have not previously been assembled in one place. Following these sites, the book traces the arrival of Sparrow Force on the island of Timor in December 1941 and the landing five days later of a combined Australian and Dutch detachment in neutral Portuguese territory at Dili, through to the Japanese assault of 20 February 1942 and the guerrilla campaign that followed. It also covers sites relevant to the two and a half years of occupation after the January 1943 Allied withdrawal, including the extensive Japanese defensive infrastructure built using Timorese forced labour, famine, executions, Allied bombing of towns and villages, and the role of the covert Services Reconnaissance Department operations. The book is targeted toward Australian defence and diplomatic personnel posted to Timor-Leste, professional military education and staff, and veterans, descendants and travellers who want to locate the places where battles were fought and ambushes laid. It makes an important contribution to Timor-Leste’s potential as a heritage tourism destination, with the economic benefits such a sector brings. Above all, it serves to acknowledge the Timorese people whose support made the Australian campaign possible, and the landscapes on which this shared history is written. The book can be purchased from the 2/2 Commando Association of Australia. Edward Willis is a committee member of the 2/2 Commando Association of Australia and a former Deputy University Librarian at Curtin University. His father, William Edward (Bill) Willis, served with the Signals Section of the No. 2 Australian Independent Company on Portuguese Timor in 1942. He has been travelling to Timor-Leste to survey wartime sites since 2008, and prepared this guide with the support of a grant from the Australian Army History Unit. This episode is hosted by Dr Natali Pearson. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The practice of history in premodern Java was profoundly influenced by precarious conditions of textual production and preservation: fragile manuscripts perished in the tropical environment, archival records were scattered far afield, and historical memories faded over many generations. InThe Precarious Past in Premodern Java, Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan examines how Javanese societies between the fifth and fifteenth centuries CE responded with distinctive strategies to record and transmit knowledge of the past. Drawing on sources in Javanese, Sanskrit, Malay, and related languages from the Indonesian archipelago, Sastrawan provides a detailed account of diverse forms of history making in premodern Java, reconstructing a dynamic culture in which written and nonwritten modes of transmission coexisted and intersected. By situating these practices within broader discussions of global historiography, this book challenges modern assumptions about what counts as “history” and illuminates how societies have developed different ways of preserving and remembering the past. A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit here to learn more. Dr Wayan Jarrah Sastrawan is a historian, lecturer and DECRA research fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, governments around the world have expelled, en masse, more than 30 million people. Yet despite its prevalence, mass expulsion remains an understudied phenomenon as scholarly attention has been directed toward the gravest atrocities—genocide and mass killing—or toward forced migration more broadly. Mass Expulsion: The Politics of Forced Population Removal (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Meghan Garrity examines why and how governments expel, providing a systematic, cross-regional account of mass expulsion over the longue durée. Using the original Government-Sponsored Mass Expulsion (GSME) dataset, the book explains when and where expulsion occurs, who is targeted, and what regimes are most likely to expel. The book identifies two overarching categories of mass expulsion—security and economic—and develops a typology of four corresponding types: counter-irredentist, counter-subversive, reprisal, and nativist. It advances a theory of mass expulsion that traces the decision-making process, showing how key structural, proximate, precipitating, and intervening factors combine to shape the conditions under which governments expel or are restrained. Evidence is drawn from archival research conducted at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the League of Nations archives in Geneva, Switzerland. This research contributes to the fields of international peace and security, political violence, and forced migration. Conceptually, it fills a gap in the literature by systematically examining mass expulsion as a distinct eliminationist policy aimed at the intentional removal of ethnic groups. Theoretically, it extends existing explanations beyond war and security threats, highlighting an entire class of expulsions targeting perceived economic threats. The book deepens our understanding of critical atrocity restraints, demonstrating the importance of alliances, the “homeland” state of the target group, and international organizations. These restraints generate core policy recommendations that seek to spur greater attention to deterring mass expulsion as a priority for atrocity prevention. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elisa Tamarkin, an English prof of high repute (Anglophilia and Apropos of Something: A History of Irrelevance and Relevance) at UC Berkeley, joins RTB to discuss Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon. It is an extended reflection on the last day of the Vietnam War, set against the imminent disappearance of war coverage in the nation’s city newspapers, and framed through her own stepfather's experience covering the war. Tamarkin anatomizes curious forms of self-delusion that flourished in the American Me generation and traces the subtle trajectory that stretching from the journalistic autonomy of the mid-century to the "embedded reporters" of the US war in Iraq to today's implacable governmental hostility to truthful reportage. Back in the 1960's Hannah Arendt and others warned that bubbles of non-information and delusive self-deceit got propagated within the corridors of power and out in the larger public realm. Now cloudy misinformation is the property of a near-ubiquitous social media realm whose corrosive effect (the power to unthink) is far less circumscribed. Mentioned Hannah Arendt, "Lying in Politics" (subject of an earlier RTB episode) and "Home To Roost". Frank Kermode Sense of an Ending (1967). The philosopher John Pollock published a book called Knowledge and Justification in 1975. Jamie Cohen-Cole The Open Mind Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (1973). Ursula Le Guin The Lathe of Heaven 1971 (Elisa also mentions John's book on Le Guin). R. A. Lafferty, The Fall of Rome (1971). Thomas Harris, I'm OK, You're OK (1967). Recallable Books: Adam Phillips, On Giving Up. Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955). Read the transcript of the episode here. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As a child, Lim Muy Lang grew up in a prosperous Sino-Khmer family in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975, her family, along with the entire population of Phnom Penh, was forced to immediately leave the city for the countryside. What followed was a harrowing struggle for survival under the Khmer Rouge’s radical revolutionary regime, which led to the deaths of all of Muy Lang’s immediate family members, and much of her extended family. In the Shadow of the Khmer Rouge: A Child Survivor’s Memoir (NUS Press, 2026), is Muy Lang’s account of what happened. It’s a story of almost unimaginable pain, cruelty, and loss, but also an incredible struggle for survival. And not least, the book is a delightful, deeply personal recollection of childhood and family life in Cambodia before 1975. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode of Talking Thai Politics, Dr Paul Chambers, talks about his new book, Praetorian Kingdom: A History of Military Ascendancy in Thailand (ISEAS, 2024). This book provides detailed insights to the military’s involvement in Thai politics over the past ninety years and more — and is an essential source for researchers and students looking to dive deeper into this topic. Paul Chambers is an associate senior fellow in the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Thailand Studies programme. A prominent scholar best known for his expertise on the military’s role in Thai politics, Paul Chambers has spent more than two decades off-and-on in Thailand, both teaching and researching. His other books include Khaki Capital: The Political Economy of the Military in Southeast Asia (co-edited, NIAS 2017). Duncan McCargo is President’s Chair in Global Affairs at Nanyang Technological University. Talking Thai Politics brings crafted conversations about the politics of Thailand to a global audience. Created by the Generation Thailand project at Nanyang Technological University, the podcast is hosted by Duncan McCargo. Our production assistant is Shermaine Lau. Website: here Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Savage: The Making of Modern Dogs in British Hong Kong (Cornell University Press, 2026) explores the dark side of colonial modernity through canine eyes, showing the many ways that dogs involuntarily contributed to the modernization of twentieth-century Hong Kong. Dr. Catherine S. Chan follows the piecemeal transplantation of British animal humanitarianism as pedigree dogs accompanied hardening class differences, dogmeat became a contested racial issue, and dogs were roped into the long list of undesirables fabricated in the so-called golden era of reforms following the social disturbances of the 1960s. Dr. Chan reveals a fragmented civilizing project that constructed dogs as dangerous, filthy, and unnecessary nuisances in a burgeoning city, rationalizing the slaughter of tens of thousands of dogs alongside paradoxical criticism of the native population for perpetrating animal cruelty and the promotion of British animal humanitarianism. Departing from anthropocentric perspectives in understanding the use of Britishness in the molding of modern cities, Savage restores the presence and agency of dogs to encourage a rethinking of the patchiness of British colonial governance and the long-lasting repercussions that modernity can have on our relationship with animals. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Examining the emergence of international public health policy between the 1930s and 80s, The Emergence of International Health Policy in Southeast Asia, India, and Sri Lanka, 1937–1978 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026) by Dr. Vivek Neelakantan sheds light on the role that rural community health initiatives in South and Southeast Asia played in the movement towards ‘primary health care’ and ‘health for all,’ articulated ultimately at the 1978 International Conference on Primary Health Care in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. The author argues that the movement was not directed exclusively from the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, but also by institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Division in rural Southeast Asia, and through local community initiatives including the Bandung Plan for Health in Indonesia. The book illustrates how an exclusive association of global health with the emergence of the WHO in the 1950s fails to account for the local, national, or regional contexts that shaped the evolution of primary health care in South and Southeast Asia. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.  Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From misty mountain oolongs to the global boba boom, Taiwan’s teas carry far more than flavor. They embody contested borders, evolving identities, and the complexities of nationhood. Routes of Taiwan Tea: Mobility, Borders, and Territoriality (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Po-Yi Hung traces tea varieties, processing expertise, and merchants across Taiwan and Southeast Asia to reveal how a simple leaf has become a force in global politics. Drawing on decades of fieldwork and extensive archival research, Dr. Hung delves deep into the history of Taiwan’s tea industry, from its roots in the Qing empire to its role in modern food nationalism. Hung shows how advocacy for Taiwanization—the movement to recover and celebrate the island’s unique history and culture—occurs not only within Taiwan’s food scenes but also through cross-border exchanges. Oolong cultivation in Thailand’s highlands and bubble tea’s rise in Vietnam demonstrate how tea acts as a nonhuman agent, fostering connections and unsettling conventional notions of sovereignty. Through these routes, tea becomes more than agriculture; it becomes an instrument of diplomacy, a marker of authenticity, and a symbol of cultural pride. Offering a fresh perspective on Taiwan’s geopolitical positioning, Routes of Taiwan Tea redefines how borders are imagined and lived. It is an essential contribution to food studies, political geography, and East and Southeast Asian studies, illuminating how everyday practices like drinking tea shape global relations. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.