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…

Associate Professor Paul J. Carnegie and Professor Victor T. King of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (IAS @ UBD) have just published a chapter on human security in Oceania.Entitled “Mapping Circumstances in Oceania: Reconsidering Human Security in an Age of Globalisation,” this chapter appears in the new book Mapping Security in the Pacific: A Focus on Context, Gender and Organisational Culture (Routledge 2020).In their chapter, Carnegie and King “contend that the field of human security (which tends to be dominated by the disciplinary concerns of international relations, development and security studies) needs to engage more fully…

Associate Professor Liam C. Kelley of the Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies.Entitled “The Collaboration Project between Engaging With Vietnam and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies,” this special issue contains three papers from an annual multi-disciplinary conference on Vietnam called Engaging With Vietnam: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (EWV) that Dr. Kelley co-organizes with Dr. Phan Le Ha, Senior Professor in the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education (SHBIE) and Director of the International and Comparative Education Research Group (ICE) at UBD.To date, the EWV has been held 11…

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 co-authored article on the biocultural importance of Tamu Kianggeh, an open-air market in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei.Entitled “Socialising over Fruits and Vegetables: The Biocultural Importance of an Open-Air Market in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam” and published in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, the article investigates ways in which Tamu Kianggeh serves as a meeting ground for ethnic and biological diversities.To read the full abstract of this paper, please visit the website of…