Southeast Asia-VU cooperation

The Faculty of Social Sciences has a long history of academic cooperation with Southeast Asia. Since 2005, this cooperation has been molded into an informal network under the name of SEAVU: Southeast Asia-VU cooperation.

SEAVU represents a network of universities that have expressed their intention to cooperate in research activities on the following themes: religion, politics and good governance, and transnational networks.

Southeast Asia occupies a rapidly changing position in the contemporary world order. While evoking images of exoticism and economic success, the economic boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s was followed by the economic, political and financial crises of that late 1990s. The rapid socio-economic development had its downside in a growing gap between rich and poor, and between rural and urban spaces. Processes of decolonization, state-formation, decentralization and democratization are combined with diasporic and migratory mobility. The enormously diverse national, ethnic and religious make-up makes comparative social research of the interconnectedness, interdependence and consequences of these processes indispensable for a thorough understanding of processes at local, regional, national, transnational and/or cross-border level and junctures. In other words, mobility (i.e. material or symbolic movement of people, goods, capital and ideas) is a key concept in the study of Southeast Asia.
 
The first workshop at Chiang Mai University (2005) brought together representatives of Southeast Asia institutions to form a consortium of universities in Southeast Asia engaging in cooperation for comparative, multi-level and multi-sited research around three broadly defined themes 1) the politics of identity within transnational networks 2) the dynamics of religious identity; and 3) local identities politics, all within the context of increasing mobility (in terms of the movement of people, goods, capital and ideas).

News

Cambodian University has joined SEAVU and two new PhD projects have recently started (www.cambodiaresearch.org).

Professor Dahles (VU University Amsterdam) has been appointed as adjunct professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and International Relations of Pannasastra University of Cambodia, in particular the Center for Conflict and Peace Studies.

Professor Salemink (VU University Amsterdam) has been awarded a workshop grant in cooperation with SEAVU partner Chiang Mai University (see under upcoming events).