IAS Researcher and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Military Studies, Dr. Indra Alverdian participated in a Joint Research together with Researchers from the National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo Japan and Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) in Jakarta, Indonesia. The research entitled, “Shaping the Future of the Indo-Pacific : Strategic Roles of Japan and Indonesia” provide an insight into potential areas of collaboration between both countries navigating global challenges and changes through mapping of potential areas of convergence, divergence and possible alignments at bilateral, regional and international level. The result of the research in the form…

Assistant Professor Chun Sheng Goh recently published two journal articles on Borneo's borderlands.(1) "Confronting the Spectres of Borneo’s Borderlands: A Hauntological Analysis of Cinematic Representations and Ethnography" in Journal of Borderlands Studies.AbstractBorderlands are haunted – not only by literal tales of spectres, but by the haunted histories, phantom sovereignty, invisible populations, and ghostly violence that shape everyday life at the frontier. This paper advances a border hauntology for Borneo’s borderlands by reading two films distributed via Netflix, Borderless Fog (2024) and Conquer: Lahad Datu (2024) alongside six ethnographic studies (Eilenberg 2012; Mee 2014; Carson 2016; Solmiah 2022; Zulkipli & Askandar 2021; Cheong et al., 2025). Methodologically,…

Assistant Professor Sanjeev Routray recently published a journal article entitled "Articulations: Production and social reproduction in an industrial neighborhood of Delhi" in Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space.The paper examines the articulation of capitalist relations with caste, ethnic, gender, and spatial relations in context-specific ways, which not only produce a structure of domination but also “minor liberations” in an industrial neighborhood in Delhi. The articulation of capitalist relations with these relations overdetermines two specific dynamics: (1) skilling, deskilling, and reskilling, and (2) social reproduction. By drawing on Stuart Hall’s framework of articulation, I show how capital leverages social differences…

Assistant Professor Sanjeev Routray recently published a journal article entitled "Fieldwork encounters: Navigation of relationships and the conundrums of ethnographic knowledge production" in Ethnography.The paper examines the methodological challenges of conducting ethnographic research in complex research settings underpinned by social inequalities and power relations. It analyses how the quests for validity and mutuality were undermined by recurrent doubts that saturated relationships with my interlocutors—displaced communities and individuals occupying positions of power in Delhi. By examining authorial voices and silences, as well as the prevailing fault lines, it highlights the issues of trust, surveillance, and the need to deploy guerrilla research techniques…

Senior Assistant Professor and Director of the Institute of Asian Studies Koh Sin Yee recently published a co-edited volume entitled Migration Studies and the Decolonial Challenge. The book is co-edited with Professor Francis Collins (University of Auckland, New Zealand) and Professor Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore, Singapore). The book asks: How can migration studies respond to the decolonial challenge? The book features contributions from migration studies scholars based in Australia, Brunei, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. In this collection of chapters, the book confronts issues of ongoing colonialism and offers a re-evaluation of…

Senior Assistant Professor and Director of the Institute of Asian Studies Koh Sin Yee recently published a journal article entitled "Racial Sensemaking and International Student Mobility: Mainland Chinese Students in Singapore and Malaysia Navigating Multiculturalism and Multiracialism" in Ethnic and Racial Studies (Q1, Scopus). The article is co-authored with Madeleine Shutler (National University of Singapore) and Professor Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore).The article uses the concept of racial sensemaking (i.e. a subjective, meaning-making process through which people interpret and explain racial experiences) to comparatively analyse the reflexive experiences of multiculturalism and multiracialism amongst mainland Chinese international students in Singapore and Malaysia who were interviewed in 2023-2024.Through foregrounding micro-level experiences of multiculturalism and…

Dr Nobumichi Teramura (IAS, UBD) and Professor Luke Nottage (Sydney Law School) recently contributed a research article to the Journal of International Economic Law (JIEL). In the Scopus index, the JIEL is a Q1 journal in 'Law' and 'Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)' quartiles. The advance publication of the article is available here.  This work was funded by Universiti Brunei Darussalam Research Grant UBD/RSCH/1.12/FICBF(b)/2022/021 and the University of Sydney Law School’s Legal Scholarship Support Scheme.Abstract: This article analyses two types of provisions relevant to corruption in Asian international investment agreements (IIAs): clauses requiring (host) states to enforce anti-corruption laws and clauses…

Senior Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian Studies Koh Sin Yee recently published a journal article entitled Post-2020 Mainland Chinese Student Mobility to Malaysia: Trends and Drivers in Asian Population Studies. The article is co-authored with Professor Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore). The article provides a brief report on the recent trend characterised by a substantial increase in application and enrolment numbers from Chinese students to Malaysia for tertiary education. It argues that this trend must be viewed through the lens of historical and contemporary interactions between Malaysia and China, alongside Malaysia’s evolving higher education landscape and internationalisation efforts.

Assistant Professor of the Institute of Asian Studies Dr Nobumichi Teramura recently published an open access book chapter on JICA’s Legal Technical Assistance Projects in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos Since the 1990s in Liam C Kelly and Gerard Sasges (eds), Vietnam Over the Long Twentieth Century (Springer 2024). Dr Teramura also co-authored an open-access journal article entitled Lawyers and Non-Lawyers in International Arbitration: Discovering Diminishing Diversity in Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review. The abstracts of the two publications can be found below: - Nobumichi Teramura, ‘JICA’s Legal Technical Assistance Projects in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos since the…

Senior Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian Studies Koh Sin Yee recently published an open access journal article on The Trends and Patterns of Informal Housing Practices in Australia in Urban Policy and Research. The article is co-authored with researchers from Monash University, Australia: Fuad Yasin Huda, Liton Kamruzzaman, Sanaz Nikfalazar, Dharmalingam Arunachalam, and Dickson Lukose.   The article reports on a study documenting informal housing practices in Australian cities using 2021–2022 data gathered through web scraping. The findings reveal a significant weekly gap between demand and supply, seasonal demand spikes, and spatial mismatches. These insights highlight the need for targeted population-, place-, and time-based…