Alumni

Wang Bangwei is Professor at Peking University, Beijing. He has published several books and articles, mostly in China, but also in Japan and some European countries. His studies include the history of Chinese Buddhist pilgrimages and the accounts of Xuanzang and Yijing. Other works address the history of Sino-Indian cultural relations. He is also a member of the Nalanda Mentor Group which is coordinating the project to re-establish a new Nalanda University in India

Anthony Reid (Professorial Fellow) is an historian , trained in New Zealand and at Cambridge, and now again based at the Australian National University after serving as founding Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA (1999-2002) and of the Asia Research Institute at NUS, Singapore (2002-7). The 30+ books he has written or edited chiefly concern the history of Southeast Asia, or the way it fits into broader patterns of world history. More specific interests are in Sumatra, Sulawesi, Sabah, and economic and religious history. His most recent books are: Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and political identity in Southeast Asia (Cambridge UP, 2010); Negotiating Asymmetry: China’s Place in Asia (co-edited 2009); Islamic Legitimacy in a Plural Asia (co-edited, 2008); and The Chinese Pacific Diaspora, c. 1400-1940 (Selected readings, 2008). However his most-read work is the 2-volume Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, c.1450-1680 (Yale UP,1988-93), now also available in Chinese as well as Indonesian, Thai and Japanese translations.

Noburu Karashima is Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo, and one of the world’s leading experts on the history of Tamil Nadu and Tamil culture. He was educated at Tokyo University and later taught and researched at the University of Tokyo, Tokyo University of Foreign Students and Taisha University. In 1995, he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Cultural Prize, while in 2003, the Japan Academy Prize was conferred upon him. His major publications include: History and Society in South India: The Cholas to Vijayanagar (Oxford University Press, ed., 2001); Ancient and Medieval Commercial Activities in the Indian Ocean: Testimony of Inscriptions and Ceramic-sherds (Taisha University, ed., 2002); and Ancient to Medieval: South Indian Society in Transition (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Prasenjit Duara is Visiting Professorial Fellow at ISEAS; Raffles Professor of the Humanities and Director of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore and Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books on Chinese and East Asian history including Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (1988), which won the Fairbank Prize of the AHA and the Levenson Prize of the AAS. His other books are Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (2003), Rescuing History from the Nation (1995), The Global and the Regional in China’s Nation-Formation , (Routledge 2009) and an edited volume on Decolonization (Routledge, 2004). His work has been widely translated into Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Duara has also contributed to volumes on historiography and historical thought including “Transnationalism and the Challenge to National Histories,” in Re-thinking American History in a Global Age , ed. Thomas Bender (2002). At present he is working on Religion and Citizenship in Asia and Hong Kong during the Cold War.

EA Darith is Visiting Senior Fellow at NSC. He is also Deputy Director of the Department of Conservation of the Monuments Outside Angkor Park, APSARA (Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap), Cambodia. He has coordinated projects between APSARA and other international teams from Japan, France, USA, Australia, Hungary, Thailand, and Singapore.

Darith received his BA from Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, his MA from Kyoto University, and PhD from Osaka Ohtani University. His research interest is in Southeast Asian ceramics, especially Khmer ceramics in Angkor period from 9th to 15th centuries. He has excavated more than 10 stoneware kilns and other monument sites in Angkor region since 2000, and has reconstructed the history and development of Angkorian ceramics and kilns. He plans to further study the scientific analysis of Angkorian stoneware with counterparts from Hawaii University, Santa Clara University (USA) and New England University (Australia) to better understand the origin of Khmer production and the expansion of the use of Angkorian stoneware.

Darith is also a lecturer of Angkorian Stoneware Ceramics at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, and teaches history of Cambodia and Khmer Studies at Pannasatra University. He has received training from Arizona State Museum, Freer and Sackler Museum at Smithsonian, and University of Pennsylvania Museum. He is working on creating an artefact management system in Angkor which will aid in the proper care of all artefacts excavated from the Angkor World Heritage Site.

Tony Day grew up in Washington D.C., received a B.A. (cum laude) in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1967 and a PhD in Southeast Asian History from Cornell University in 1981. In 1967-1969 he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Calapan, Mindoro Oriental, the Philippines, and from 1978 to1998 he taught Southeast Asian and Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. In 2004-2005 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University and a Fellow of the National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. From 2006-2012 he was a part-time visiting professor of history at Wesleyan University, Middletown CT.

Tony Day’s publications include Fluid Iron: State Formation in Southeast Asia (2002); Clearing a Space: Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature (2002), edited with Keith Foulcher; Identifying with Freedom: Indonesia after Suharto (ed., 2007); and Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia (2010), edited with Maya Liem. He is currently Regional Editor for South East Asia Research. In August 2013 he moved to Singapore with his wife and youngest son.

Edmund Edwards McKinnon has been intermittently resident in Southeast Asia since 1960. He studied agriculture at the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture and thereafter held posts in plantation agriculture in Indonesia and South India. He discovered the mediaeval harbour site of Kota Cina near Belawan, Deli in 1972 and since then has been involved in archaeological and art historical research in Sumatra. He has gone on to identify several mediaeval settlement sites in north Sumatra and Aceh, including Kota Rentang, as well as Pulau Kompeh in Aru bay and the Pancu / Lambaroneujid site west of Banda Aceh. He noted the destruction of prehistoric shell middens at Hinai in the early 1970s and thereafter became interested in mediaeval export ceramic wares.

Ed has been involved in excavation work at Kota Cina and Kota Rentang in north Sumatra; in Palembang and Batujaya with the École française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), at Cot Me near Ladong; and at Lhok Cut, Lamreh, Aceh Besar regency with the Earth Observatory of Singapore, helping to recover evidence of historical tsunamis in the Aceh region.

His current interests include mediaeval inter-regional commerce between the Middle East, South Asia and China, the trading activities of the Tamil guilds and their cultural and linguistic impact on the Karo element of north Sumatra; the arrival of Islam, mediaeval trade ceramics, including South Asian red earthen wares and Chinese and Southeast Asian stonewares; and early Dutch colonial accounts of the hinterland of Kota Cina, in particular the Karo area of northern Sumatra.

Chang Yufen is Visiting Fellow at NSC. She received her PhD in sociology from University of Michigan in May 2013. She spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Asia Research Institute before assuming the position of Visiting Fellow with the NSC at ISEAS. Her dissertation deals with how the mechanisms of emulation, differentiation, and hybridization shaped the formative process of the vernacular literature in colonial Vietnam. While at ISEAS, she will work on a project about pre-colonial Sino-Vietnamese translation. Her research interests include colonial Vietnamese nationalism, China-Southeast Asian cultural interconnections, translation, and Chinese-ness.

Dr Ding Choo Ming is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Centre and Professor and Principal Research Fellow at ATMA (Institut Alam & Tamadun Melayu) or the Institute of the Malay World and Civilization, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. His research interests include Malay literature in the Riau Islands, authorship of Malay hikayat of 19th century, Malay world’s pantun and local knowledge in the Malay World. He has published in international journals and is the editor of the Journal Terjemahan Alam & Tamadun Melayu (2009–present).

Dr Ding’s recent and forthcoming publications include Pantun Baba Pilihan di Negeri Selat 1920-1940 (Penang: USM Press 2012); Kajian Baru Manuskrip dan Pantun Melayu (ATMA, 2012); Dari Sitiawan ke Bangi: Koleksi Esei tentang Sejarah Perkembangan Masa Lalu dan Cabaran Masa Depan Bahasa Melayu (ATMA 2012), and Bridging the Past: A Festschrift Honoring Prof Dr Muhammad Haji Salleh, KL: DBP (forthcoming).