The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) is pleased to announce the publication of a new book co-edited by two IAS staff members. The book is entitled New Frontiers in Asia-Pacific International Arbitration and Dispute Resolution and is published by Wolters Kluwer, It is edited by IAS Director, Associate Professor Bruno Jetin, IAS researcher, Assistant Professor Nobumichi Teramura, together with Professor Luke Nottage of the Sydney Law School, and Professor Shahla Ali of the University of Hong Kong. To quote from the description of this new volume, ″New Frontiers in Asia-Pacific International Arbitration and Dispute…

Dr. Victor T. King of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam and Dr. Stephen C. Druce of the Academy of Brunei Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam have just published two edited volumes with that cover a variety of issues pertaining to Bruneian society, both past and present.These two volumes have been published in the Routledge “Modern Anthropology of Southeast Asia” series.The first volume, entitled Origins, History and Social Structure in Brunei Darussalam, is a wide-ranging book that is the first to re-evaluate the early history and historiography of Brunei Darussalam, the origins of the sultanate, its genealogical…

A work by Dr. Victor T. King, Professor of Borneo Studies at the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, has been translated into Indonesian.The Best of Borneo Travel, a book that Dr.King first published with Oxford Paperbacks in 1993 is available in Indonesian as Kalimantan tempo doeloe (Komunitas Bambu).To quote from the English description of the book,The Best of Borneo Travel is just that, a fascinating collection of colorful travel notes by Westerners--from those who first visited this Indonesian island-nation in the sixteenth century to writers still enthralled by Borneo today.Through the eyes of these European explorers, merchants,…

Associate Professor Paul J. Carnegie of the Institute of Asian Studies (IAS) at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) has just published a new chapter on “National Imaginary, Ethnic Plurality, and State Formation in Indonesia” in The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity. This chapter appears with 14 others in a section on Ethno-nationalism and Power that Dr. Carnegie edited for this 3-volume work. Please see below for an abstract of the chapter by Dr. Carnegie. Carnegie P.J. (2019) National Imaginary, Ethnic Plurality, and State Formation in Indonesia. In: Ratuva S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_165 Abstract Indonesia…

F. Merlin Franco, Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD), has just published a new article on “Persistence of the Salty-Sweet Nipah Sugar in the Popular Foodways of Brunei Darussalam.”Co-authored with Nurzahidah Bakar and published in the Journal of Ethnobiology, the paper examines the position of gula anau, a sweetener obtained from the mangrove palm nipah (Nypa fruticans), in the popular foodways of contemporary Brunei.Important as a “famine food” during the period of Japanese occupation during World War II, gula anau continues to sweeten drinks traditional snacks, known as…

Victor T. King, Professor of Borneo Studies at the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) is well known for engaging in a wide range of research topics, from the anthropology of Borneo to tourism and heritage in Southeast Asia. However, he has now extended his intellectual interests far beyond Southeast Asia. . . all the way to the Amazon!In particular, Professor King has co-edited a volume on Indigenous Amazonia, Regional Development and Territorial Dynamics (Springer 2020) together with Walter Leal Filho (Hamburg University of Applied Sciences) and Ismar Borges de Lima (State University of Roraima).This…

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) has recently published an article in the journal Research in Comparative and International Education (RICE) entitled “The Decline of Asian Studies in the West and the Rise of Knowledge Production in Asia: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Mobility, Knowledge Production, and Academic Discourses.”This article was a contribution to a special issue of RICE on “Transnationally-trained Scholars Working in Global Contexts: Knowledge Production, Identity, Epistemology, and Career Trajectories” that was edited by Senior Profsesor Phan Le Ha (SHIBIE, UBD) and Rommel Curaming (FASS, UBD),…

Professor Victor T. King of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) has edited a special issue of the journal Suvannabhumi: Multi-disciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies on “Debating Southeast Asia.”The papers in this special issue were first presented at a conference organized by the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies at Busan University of Foreign Studies in 2019 on the theme of “The Recognition and Construction of Southeast Asia as a Whole.”In addition to an introduction, Professor King also has a paper in this special issue entitled “Who Made Southeast Asia? Personages, Programs and Problems…

In a new article on Vietnamese history, Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley reinterprets what we know about the historical development of the southern half of Vietnam. The southern half of Vietnam has long been characterized by historians as historically less-centralized, less-Confucian, and less-bureaucratic than the Vietnamese heartland in the Red River delta. However, through a comparative examination of tax collection and military recruitment in these two regions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Dr. Kelley argues that the southern half of Vietnam in many ways surpassed its northern counterpart in its centralized control of the population. This paper enables historians…

F. Merlin Franco, Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam has recently co-authored an article on traditional healing practices and medicinal plants in the Kiudang area of Tutong District, Brunei Darussalam.Entitled “A Comparative Account of the Traditional Healing Practices and Healers and Non-healers in the Kiudang Area of Brunei Darussalam,” this article has just been published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology.To quote from the abstract, the article compares “the traditional medicinal knowledge and associated spiritual practices of healers with that of non-healers, to understand the relevance of healers in contemporary times. Given…