Prof. Lisandro E. Claudio is the new Chair of the Center for Southeast Asia Studies, following Prof. Nancy Lee Peluso, who served as Chair since July 2020. CSEAS extends deep thanks to Prof. Peluso in appreciation of her guidance of the Center and achievements in supporting Southeast Asia Studies at Berkeley, especially during the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic. With much excitement, CSEAS extends further thanks to Prof. Peluso for her leadership role in securing a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation Initiative on Southeast Asia for the project, “Southeast Asian Lives and Histories” (SEALIVES).
CSEAS is similarly thrilled to welcome Prof. Lisandro Claudio, Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Asian History from the University of Melbourne. Prof. Claudio is an intellectual and cultural historian of the Philippines, with a broad interest in the history of global liberal thought. His book Liberalism and the Postcolony: Thinking the State in Twentieth-Century Philippines (NUS, Kyoto, and Ateneo de Manila Press) received the 2019 George McT. Kahin Prize from the Association of Asian Studies and the 2019 European Association for Southeast Asian Studies Humanities Book Prize.
His next book project, tentatively titled The Profligate Colonial: How America Exported Austerity Through the Philippines, 1902-1986, seeks to trace the historical and cultural roots of economic conservatism in the Philippines, from the implementation of the gold-exchange standard during the American Progressive Era to the collapse of developmentalism under the Marcos dictatorship. Apart from being a revisionist history of the Philippine economics and the American Progressive Era, it is an attempt to foreground textual methods in economic history through an examination of the relationship between discourses of austerity and colonialism.
Prior to his appointment at Berkeley, Claudio taught at Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University and was a post-doctoral fellow at Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies. CSEAS looks forward to continuing its activities and programs under Prof. Claudio’s leadership.