Teren Sevea joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as visiting scholar and Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia for the winter quarter of 2026. He currently serves as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School.

He is a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in South and Southeast Asia, and received his PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining HDS, he served as Assistant Professor of South Asia Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Sevea is the author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which received the 2022 Harry J.Benda Prize, awarded by the Association of Asian Studies. Sevea also co-edited Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia (ISEAS, 2009). He is currently completing his second book entitled Singapore Islam: The Prophet's Port and Sufism across the Oceans, and is working on his third monograph, provisionally entitled Animal Saints and Sinners: Lessons on Islam and Multispeciesism from the East.

Sevea is the author of book chapters and journal articles pertaining to Indian Ocean networks, Sufi textual traditions, Islamic erotology, Islamic third worldism, and the socioeconomic significance of spirits, that have been published in journals such as Third World Quarterly, Modern Asian Studies, The Indian Economic and Social History Review and Journal of Sufi Studies. In addition to this, he is a coordinator of a multimedia project entitled “The Lighthouses of God: Mapping Sanctity Across the Indian Ocean,” which investigates the evolving landscapes of Indian Ocean Islam through photography, film, and GIS technology.

Theara Thun joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar, Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia for fall quarter of 2025. Thun received his PhD in history from the National University of Singapore (NUS), through a joint doctoral program with the Harvard-Yenching Institute (Harvard University). He was the recipient of the 2019 Wang Gungwu Medal and Prize for the “Best PhD Thesis in the Social Sciences/Humanities”. Currently, Dr. Thun is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, funded by Hong Kong’s Research Grants Council. His research interests include intellectual history, ethnic politics, and post-war education, with a particular focus on Cambodia and Southeast Asia.

His first book entitled Epistemology of the Past: Texts, History, and Intellectuals of Cambodia, 1855–1970 is published by the University of Hawaii Press in August 2024. Apart from critically exploring various kinds and forms of scholarly debates of Cambodian, Thai and French intellectuals, the book brings together one of the largest original indigenous manuscript collections ever put together in a single study of Southeast Asian Studies scholarship. It argues that despite the emergence of Western historical writings during colonial encounters in Cambodia and across Southeast Asia, precolonial historical scholarship was never entirely displaced. Instead, the precolonial indigenous scholarship interfaced with the Western model of historical thought, resulting in the creation of a new body of knowledge with its own distinct epistemology.

As a Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford fellow on Southeast Asia, Dr. Thun worked on his second book project which explores post-war intellectual and higher education development in Cambodia. The project seeks to understand how Cambodia’s universities have transformed in relation to society, following the complete destruction of the entire educational system and the massacre of most teaching personnel during the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979.

Gavin Shatkin joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as Visiting Scholar, Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia for the fall quarter of 2025. He is a Professor of Public Policy and Architecture at Northeastern University and an urban planner who works on the political economy of urbanization and urban planning and policy in Southeast Asia.  His recent research has addressed: the role of state actors in the emergence across Asia of very large, developer-built ‘urban real estate megaprojects’; the implications of climate change induced flood risk for questions of property rights in coastal cities; and the geopolitical dynamics shaping the ‘infrastructure turn’ in urban policy in large Southeast Asian cities.  His articles have been published in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Studies, Annals of the Association American Geographers, and numerous other journals in urban studies, planning, geography, and Asian studies.  His most recent book is Cities for Profit: The Real Estate Turn in Asia’s Urban Politics (Cornell, 2017). 

While at APARC, Gavin primarily focused on a book manuscript examining the implications of Cold War political legacies for contemporary urban development and planning in Southeast Asia.  The book focuses on three megalopolises—Jakarta, Bangkok, and Metro Manila—that were the capital cities of nations that saw the consolidation (with American support) of authoritarian regimes during the period of Southeast Asia’s ‘hot Cold War’ during the 1960s and 1970s.  The book examines the legacies of Cold War era law, policy, and political discourse in three areas: property rights and land management; the production of knowledge about urbanization; and definitions of urban citizenship and belonging.

Meredith L. Weiss joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as 2024-2025 Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia from September 2024 to April 2025. She is Professor of Political Science in the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY). In several books—most recently, The Roots of Resilience: Party Machines and Grassroots Politics in Southeast Asia (Cornell, 2020), and the co-authored Mobilizing for Elections: Patronage and Political Machines in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 2022)—numerous articles, and over a dozen edited or co-edited volumes, she addresses issues of social mobilization, civil society, and collective identity; electoral politics and parties; and governance, regime change, and institutional reform in Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Singapore. She has conducted years of fieldwork in those two countries, along with shorter periods in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Timor-Leste, and has held visiting fellowships or professorships in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, and the US. Weiss is the founding Director of the SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium (SEAC) and co-edits the Cambridge Elements series, Politics & Society in Southeast Asia. As a Lee Kong Chian NUS–Stanford fellow, she worked primarily on a book manuscript on Malaysian sociopolitical development.

Gerhard Hoffstaedter joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as Visiting Scholar and Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia for the 2024 spring quarter. He currently serves as Associate Professor in Anthropology at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. While at APARC, he conducted research on the effects of irregular migration trajectories of refugees in Southeast Asia.

Soksamphoas Im joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as Visiting Scholar, Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia for the fall quarter of 2023. Dr. Im is currently a research affiliate at the University of Michigan's Center for Southeast Asian Studies. While at APARC, Dr. Im conducted research with Professor Donald Emmerson and the Southeast Asia Program on social welfare policies and political strategy in Cambodia

Reza Idria joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as Visiting Scholar and 2022-23 Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia for the winter and spring quarter of 2023. Idria currently serves as Assistant Professor at the Universitas Islam Negeri Ar-Raniry, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. While at APARC, he conducted research on the wide range of social and political responses that have emerged with the state implementation of Sharia (Islamic Law) in Indonesia.