Setting the Scene The massacre of student protestors at Thammasat University at the hand of police, military and royalist paramilitary groups on 6 October 1976 is one of the most notorious episodes i...

A generation that was once described as politically apathetic is suddenly making governments nervous. In Bangladesh, students helped turn a movement that began around a quota system into a challen...

Deconstructing Geopolitical Obsession through a Post-Colonial Epistemic Narrative Every year, the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore publishes its State of Southeast Asia 2026 Survey Report ,...

Imagine this: You are an ordinary Filipino during the country’s habagat (Southwest Monsoon) season, bringing rains 24/7. Creeks and rivers start to overflow, flood waters start to rise on the street...

I recently attended a public talk by Prof. Jeffery Wasserstrom at Unbound Books and Coffee , an inspirational new and important diasporic community space in San Francisco Chinatown. The talk, entitle...

On 15 August 2026, monks from the Patriotic Myanmar Monks Union visited and inspected allegedly illegal construction work at the Sein Kone Mosque in Thanlyin, about ten kilometers from Yangon, and t...

From June 24 to July 31, the US will be participating in RIMPAC 2026 , the 30th iteration of the world’s largest international maritime exercise designed to enhance interoperability, improve disaster...

Power went out again in N’Djamena. The low hum of the air conditioner vanished, leaving only the faint scrape of windblown dust against the window frame. Before that brief silence could let me catch m...

Introduction: When Power Becomes Common Sense “I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, comrade?” The provocation in Elaine Brown’s ...

1. Pain in contemporary China is not merely endured. It is organized, moralized, redistributed, and ultimately naturalized as value. To suffer is not simply to live under constraint; it is to demon...

Over the past few years, the “trans question” has become more central to the cultural politics of right-wing movements around the world. These convergences are emblematic of a globalized right-wing wh...

Introduction Resource extraction and the moulding of people into the workings of a global commodity market has a long history in Indonesia. The colonial government first enabled and legitimised reso...

Mourning as a Political Image In Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, women gathered around new graves as families buried those killed in the latest round of war. A Reuters photograph from March 16 ...

“You should have described the rituals in detail and more accurately. This is about our community, and the future generations are going to read this,” a young Boro colleague said to me after I had pub...

Introduction In late 2025, the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh found former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina guilty in absentia and sentenced her to death. The trial reflected broader dem...

Introduction The war in Vietnam ended fifty years ago when the communist forces of North Vietnam overran Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam. Just three years later, in August and September 19...

For nearly three decades, Thailand’s electoral arena seemed increasingly dominated by parties aligned with democratic and liberal forces, from Thai Rak Thai’s landslides to the rise of Move Forward...

Introduction Since the 2020s, the politicization of influencers has become a prominent global trend. Social media influencers have increasingly engaged with electoral politics, social advocacy, soft...

In the Himalayan region, in Bhutan and Northeast of India, rice is present in every passage of life from birth to death, and beyond. Rice is regarded as an elixir of life for the nourishment it provid...

China has traditionally been seen as a relatively homogenous country. For extended periods of time, China pursued a path of being self-sufficient and was relatively closed for foreign business and tra...

In February’s lower house election, voters in Japan delivered the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) the most decisive single-party victory of the postwar era. Prime Minister Sanae Tak...

Indonesia’s religious diversity often conceals the complexity of faith on the ground. In Java, belief is less a matter of rigid categories than of everyday negotiation—unfolding in courtyards, coffee ...

On 15 December 2025, Hong Kong’s High Court found media tycoon Jimmy Lai guilty of two counts of conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed national security law, along with...

IMF’s Governance and Corruption Diagnostic (2025) report published on 19th November 2025 has identified systemic corruption, elite capture, and politicised decision-making as structural features of P...

The impetus to publish these essays in Critical Asian Studies emerged from a workshop at Duke University (US) in February 2025, entitled “New Directions in China-Africa Studies.” The workshop aimed ...

“I don’t like this kind of weather; it looks ominous with the dark clouds, and it feels stuffy with no chance of a gentle breeze. I was going to say yi loh-hor [it’s raining] tapi [but] it’s not exact...

“I don’t like this kind of weather; it looks ominous with the dark clouds, and it feels stuffy with no chance of a gentle breeze. I was going to say yi loh-hor [it’s raining] tapi [but] it’s not exact...

Local-Level Religious Activists Recently Upended Japan’s Political Order Japan ranks among the least religious countries in the world—according to recent survey data, as many as 80% or 90% of respon...

Local-Level Religious Activists Recently Upended Japan’s Political Order Japan ranks among the least religious countries in the world—according to recent survey data, as many as 80% or 90% of respon...

As a citizen of Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet Central Asian country, I am very pleased to share some pieces from Uzbek and Karakalpak literature translated into English for the CAS readers. Both literatur...

On August 16, 2024, the online newspaper of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Báo điện tử - Đảng Cộng sản Việt Nam , published a story covering the ongoing rollout of a new generation of biometric nati...

On October 4, Sanae Takaichi secured a historic victory against four competitors to become the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s first female president since its founding in 1955. Two weeks later, sh...

It has been five years since China imposed the National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong. This imposition has sharply curtailed the freedoms and autonomy promised under the Sino-British Joint Declarat...

Co-created by Mohammed Amer and Ramy Youssef, the semi-autobiographical comedy-drama series Mo made its mark by receiving critical acclaim for starring a Palestinian refugee as a protagonist in a ma...

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s 27 March proclamation of “ victory ” regarding the construction of the so-called Madani Mosque on the site of a historic Hindu temple in the center of Kuala Lu...

Asia stands as a crucible of profound economic and physical growth in recent decades. This expansive region is not only experiencing rapid social transformation but also undergoing significant changes...

The recent electoral victory of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi, marking its return to power in the capital after a 27-year hiatus from the state assembly, has ignited extensive scholarly deb...

Public distress in modern China has become a battleground — not only over the legitimacy of such emotions but also over who has the right to define such meaning. In a political climate where the visib...

May 5, 2025, 7:00-8:30 PM (central U.S.) Via Zoom

This paper examines transnational networks of Pakistani migrants in two Chinese cities, Guangzhou and Shaoxing. It investigates how five key migrant networks (interpersonal, caste-based, religious,...

Six months after its 2021 coup, Myanmar’s junta pledged election by August 2023. For over two years, China observed patiently, but when August passed without an election, the junta extended emergenc...

On October 20, 2024, Indonesia inaugurated its new president and vice-president, Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka. Many experts have raised concerns among experts who view it as a signal to...

Bangkok’s suburban areas have been transformed tremendously. Previously, the areas were the most important rice fields for Thailand’s rice production and exports for several centuries. It was the rice...

Introduction The leadership of the Spring Revolution or National Unity Government (NUG) against the February 1, 2021 coup and continued military rule in Myanmar is often described as weak or ineffec...