Southeast Asia

SEALIVES Small Grants Program

We invite applications for the first year of the annual UC Berkeley CSEAS Southeast Asian Lives and Histories small grants program. Applicants must be enrolled at or affiliated with UCB, other UCs, CSUs, or institutions located in Southeast Asia. Should you have any questions, don't hesitate to email cseas@berkeley.edu.

For applicants from UC Berkeley, other UCs, and CSUs—

The UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies is seeking participation in our Southeast Asian Lives (SEALIVES...

Southeast Asian Lives and Histories

The UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asia Studies (CSEAS) is thrilled to announce that it is the recipient of a major grant from the Henry Luce Foundation Initiative on Southeast Asiafor the project Southeast Asian Lives and Histories (SEALIVES).

The Luce grant will provide $400,000 to support SEALIVES, a thematic umbrella for projects conducted about Southeast Asians in Southeast Asia and the diaspora. The heart of...

Khatharya Um Receives Fukuoka Prize

June 9, 2023

CSEAS is thrilled and honored to share that CSEAS core faculty member Khatharya Um, Associate Professor of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, has been selected as the recipient of the prestigious Academic Prize for 2023 by the Fukuoka Prize Committee. Since its establishment in 1990, the Fukuoka Prize has commemorated the outstanding achievements of individuals, groups, or organizations who, in the words of the Secretariat of the Fukuoka Prize Committee, "create as well as preserve the many distinct and diverse cultures in the Asian region." They continue: "The Prize aims to foster...

CSEAS awards FLAS fellowships for Summer 2021

May 14, 2021

CSEAS awarded Foreign Languages and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships for Summer 2021 to UC Berkeley graduate students Sean Cronan (History), Christian Gilberti (South & Southeast Asian Studies), Kirt Mausert (Anthropology), and Oren Samet-Marram (Political Science) to study Burmese. CSEAS also awarded FLAS fellowships to UC Santa Cruz graduate students Wayne Huang (Anthropology) to study Indonesian and Philip Conklin (History of Consciousness) to study Filipino. These FLAS recipients will all study at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI), the intensive summer...

Online lecture: Lessons from the 1918 Flu Pandemic in India and Indonesia

April 22, 2020

UC Berkeley’s Office of Resources for International and Area Studies (ORIAS) has been hosting a regular series of online presentations for K-14 educators about world responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. A presentation in early April, by Prof. Siddharth Chandra from Michigan State University, covered the 1918 flu pandemic in India and Indonesia, which saw high death rates and waves of transmission. The presentation is available now online as a video link or as a slide deck for...

Mu Sochua gives campus talk on women in Cambodian politics

October 14, 2019

Mu Sochua gave a CSEAS-sponsored talk on campus on October 30 on the role of women in Cambodian politics. Sochua is the Vice-President of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in charge of Foreign Affairs and Public Relations. Formerly, she served as Minister of Women and Veterans' Affairs in Cambodia’s coalition government from 1998 to 2004, and was also a member of Cambodia’s National Assembly, representing Battambang. Sochua left Cambodia in 2017 following a crackdown on opposition leaders and civil society, and the forcible dissolution of CNRP by the Hun Sen government.

In...

New website for UC Berkeley Khmer language classes

May 1, 2019

Khmer language instructor Frank Smith, in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, has set up a website about his classes. These classes are also open via Distance Learning for enrollment by students at UCLA and UC Irvine.

New faculty hire in Anthropology conducts research in Thailand and Finland

June 24, 2019

UC Berkeley's Department of Anthropology has announced a new faculty hire effective July 2019. Dr. Daena Funahashi is a medical anthropologist who studies mental health, sacrifice and addiction in Finland and Thailand. She received her Ph.D in Anthropology from Cornell University. Before joining the Berkeley faculty, she was Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University in Denmark.

CSEAS awards FLAS fellowships for 2019-20

June 25, 2019

CSEAS has awarded Foreign Languages and Area Studies (FLAS) graduate student fellowships for the 2019-20 academic year to Jennifer Duque (Ethnic Studies) and Aaron Gatdula (City & Regional Planning) to study Filipino, Ngoc-Mai Phan (Ethnic Studies) to study Vietnamese, and Justin Weinstock (Anthropology) to study Thai. Chyrylle Digsay (South & Southeast Asian Studies and Legal Studies) received an undergraduate FLAS award to study Filipino.