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…