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…

Assistant Professor Angela Tritto together with Dr. Punto Wijayanto from Trisakti University in Jakarta have recently published a chapter titled “The Maritime Silk Road: Tourism, Heritage, Symbols and the People-to-People Dimension of China’s Heritage Diplomacy in Indonesia” in the book Heritage Conservation and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Routledge).The chapter examines the nexus of economic, cultural, and diplomatic activities that constitute China’s heritage diplomacy in Indonesia and is set in the context of the rising importance of Chinese tourists and investments in Indonesia’s tourism, which became a prominent part of the diplomatic talks in BRI forums to direct Chinese investments…

Senior Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian Studies Koh Sin Yee has recently published a co-authored editorial on “Way-finding agendas through Transactions” in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.The piece is the first in a series of occasional editorials where readers are guided through groups of papers recently published in the journal that the editorial board considers as being ‘way-finding’ contributions to geographical debates. In spotlighting these groups of curated papers, the editorial invites readers to use the papers to navigate and engage with ongoing conversations and discussions in the field.

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam has recently published a chapter entitled “Tianxia as Anticosmopolitan and Protoracial: A Case Study of Late Imperial Vietnam” in a book entitled Tianxia in Comparative Perspectives: Alternative Models for a Possible Planetary Order that was edited by Roger T. Ames, Sor-hoon Tan, and Steven Y. H. Yang (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2023).“Tianxia/Thiên Hạ” is a very old concept in East Asia. It literally means “All Under Heaven,” and it is a term that was used to refer to such concepts as “the empire” or…