The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to announce a suite of training, fellowship, and funding opportunities to support Stanford students interested in the area of contemporary Asia. APARC invites highly motivated and dedicated undergraduate- and graduate-level students to apply for these offerings:

APARC Summer 2023 Research Assistant Internships

APARC seeks current Stanford students to join our team as paid research assistant interns for the duration of the summer 2023 quarter. Research assistants work with assigned APARC faculty members on varied issues related to the politics, economies, populations, security, foreign policies, and international relations of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. This summer's projects include:

• The Biopolitics of Cigarette Smoking and Production
• The Bureaucratic State: A Personnel Management Lens
• China’s Largest Corporations
• Healthy Aging in Asia
• Hiding in Plain Sight: How China Became A Great Power
• Nationalism and Racism in Asia
• U.S. Rivals: Construct or Reality?  
   

All summer research assistant positions will be on campus for eight weeks. The hourly pay rate is $17.25 for undergraduate students, $25 for graduate students.

The deadline for submitting applications and letters of recommendation is March 1, 2023.

Please follow these application guidelines:

I. Prepare the following materials:

• A current CV;
• A cover letter (up to 1 page);
• Completed Student Information Sheet

II. Fill out the online application form for summer 2023, including the above two attachments, and submit the complete form.

III. Arrange for a letter of recommendation from a faculty to be sent directly to Shorenstein APARC. Please note: the faculty members should email their letters directly to Kristen Lee at kllee@stanford.edu. We will consider only applications that include all supporting documents.

For more information and details about each summer research project, visit the Summer Research Assistant Internships Page >

APARC 2023-24 Predoctoral Fellowship

APARC supports Stanford Ph.D. candidates who specialize in contemporary Asia topics. The Center offers a stipend of $37,230 for the 2023-24 academic year, plus Stanford's Terminal Graduate Registration (TGR) fee for three quarters. We expect fellows to remain in residence at the Center throughout the year and to participate in Center activities.

Applications for the 2023-24 fellowship cycle of the APARC Predoctoral Fellowship are due March 1, 2023.

Please follow these application guidelines:

I. Prepare the following materials:

• A current CV;
• A cover letter including a brief description of your dissertation (up to 5 double-spaced pages);
• A copy of your transcripts. Transcripts should cover all graduate work and include evidence of recently-completed work.

II. Fill out the following online application form, including the above three attachments, and submit the complete application form.

III. Arrange for two (2) letters of recommendation from members of your dissertation committee to be sent directly to Shorenstein APARC.  
Please note: the faculty/advisors should email their letters directly to Kristen Lee at kllee@stanford.edu.

We will consider only applications that include all supporting documents. The Center will give priority to candidates who are prepared to finish their degree by the end of the 2023-24 academic year.

For more information, visit the APARC Predoctoral Fellowship Page >

APARC Diversity Grant

APARC's diversity grant supports Stanford undergraduate and graduate students from underrepresented minorities who are interested in contemporary Asia. The Center will award a maximum of $10,000 per grant to support a wide range of research expenses.

The Center is reviewing grant applications on a rolling basis.  
To be considered for the grant, please follow these application guidelines:

I. Prepare the following materials:

• A statement describing the proposed research activity or project (no more than three pages);
• A current CV;
• An itemized budget request explaining research expense needs.

II. Fill out the following online application form, including the above three attachments, and submit the complete application form.

III. Arrange for a letter of recommendation from a faculty to be sent directly to APARC.  

Please note: the faculty members should email their letters directly to Kristen Lee at kllee@stanford.edu.

For more information, visit the APARC Diversity Grant page >

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University’s hub for interdisciplinary research, education, and engagement on contemporary Asia, invites nominations for the 2023 Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award recognizes outstanding journalists and journalism organizations with outstanding track records of helping audiences worldwide understand the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region. The 2023 award will honor a recipient whose work has primarily appeared in Asian news media. APARC invites 2023 award nomination submissions from news editors, publishers, scholars, journalism associations, and entities focused on researching and interpreting the Asia-Pacific region. Submissions are due by Wednesday, February 15, 2023.

Sponsored by APARC, the award carries a cash prize of US $10,000. It alternates between recipients whose work has primarily appeared in Asian news media and those whose work has primarily appeared in American news media. The 2023 award will recognize a recipient from the former category.

For the purpose of the award, the Asia-Pacific region is defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Both individual journalists with a considerable body of work and journalism organizations are eligible for the award. Nominees’ work may be in traditional forms of print or broadcast journalism and/or in new forms of multimedia journalism. The Award Selection Committee, whose members are experts in journalism and Asia research and policy, presides over the judging of nominees and is responsible for the selection of honorees.

An annual tradition since 2002, the award honors the legacy of APARC benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. Over the course of its history, the award has recognized world-class journalists who push the boundaries of coverage of the Asia-Pacific region and help advance mutual understanding between audiences in the United States and their Asian counterparts.

Recent honorees include NPR's Beijing Correspondent Emily Feng; Burmese journalist and human rights defender Swe Win; former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Tom Wright; and the internationally esteemed champion of press freedom Maria Ressa, CEO and executive editor of the Philippine news platform Rappler and winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

Award nominations are accepted electronically through Wednesday, February 15, 2023, at 11:59 PM PST. For information about the nomination procedures and to submit a nomination please visit the award nomination entry page. The Center will announce the winner by April 2023 and present the award at a public ceremony at Stanford in the autumn quarter of 2023.

Please direct all inquiries to aparc-communications@stanford.edu.

This commentary was first published by Nikkei Asia.

The White House has styled the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment announced by U.S. President Joe Biden in June as a $40 billion pathway to work with allies, partners and the private sector to offer sustainable, green infrastructure alternatives.

This marks the latest American effort to offer an infrastructure alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative. But given the disappointing results seen with previous such programs, it is imperative that Washington look for lessons in the successes of other more creative efforts in recent years.

Experience shows that the U.S. and its allies can win important infrastructure victories by being strategic, proactive and persistent, and by building close partnerships between government and private business.

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Consider the deal under which U.S. private equity group Cerberus Capital acquired a bankrupt shipyard in the Philippines last April, keeping it out of Chinese hands.

The U.S. embassy in Manila had alerted Washington to the business' failure in 2019, noting that its Subic Bay location provided the closest deep-water port access and ship supply and repair facilities to the disputed South China Sea and that Philippine officials were concerned about the prospect of Chinese companies moving in. Some in Washington showed interest, but the bureaucracy initially struggled to translate this into action. Fortunately, key players in the government persisted.

Working closely with Cerberus executives to overcome delays and a decision by the U.S. International Development Finance Corp. (DFC) not to participate in the project, these officials developed a creative solution: obtaining commitments from the U.S. Army and the Philippine Navy to lease parts of the project area, thereby guaranteeing Cerberus the steady revenue stream it required to proceed. The deal was a big win but happened only through the ad hoc efforts of a few people.

The Australian government took a more proactive approach toward the sale of the Pacific arm of Digicel Group, which controlled much of the communications and internet infrastructure in six island nations, including Papua New Guinea. Two Chinese state-owned companies had immediately expressed interest in the assets when Irish billionaire Denis O'Brien put them up for sale in 2020.

The U.S. took a different but equally strategic approach toward a third infrastructure development of strategic importance: China's building of a deep-water port at Kyaukphyu on the Bay of Bengal in Myanmar.

CITIC Group, the Chinese state-owned lead investor, had initially proposed a $7.3 billion port complex which would have made Kyaukphyu as big as Southern California's massive Long Beach freight hub.

Some U.S. and Myanmar officials were concerned that Naypyidaw could be saddled with sizable debt for a project of questionable commercial viability as the Chinese proposal included loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Myanmar to finance its 15% stake. CITIC was to take 85%.

In response to a request from the National League for Democracy-led government, Washington's embassy in Yangon used funds from an existing U.S. Agency for International Development program to hire independent experts to conduct due diligence on the project.

They succeeded in downsizing the project to $1.3 billion and doubling Myanmar's equity participation to 30%, thus avoiding the need for borrowing from China. Going ahead on a smaller scale then greatly reduced concerns about potential repercussions.

These three efforts demonstrate that the U.S. and its allies can, when they focus imaginatively, offer countries in the region viable infrastructure options that reduce their dependence on Chinese investments.

They also highlight, however, that this process remains ad hoc and needs substantial improvement. For the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment to be successful, the U.S. and its partners must adopt a more systematic strategic approach.

This approach should include three components. First, the U.S. should build on its recent appointment of a global infrastructure coordinator at the State Department by moving that position to the White House. It should give the coordinator authority to bring together personnel from different agencies and ample staff of his or her own and provide a clear mandate to identify and pursue priority infrastructure projects aggressively.

Second, the U.S. must make better use of existing tools by bolstering the DFC's flexibility, requiring each embassy to assign an officer to identify potential projects and ensuring senior officials match Beijing's aggressive lobbying efforts.

Third, the U.S. infrastructure team should forge partnerships with private companies on specific infrastructure projects and redouble efforts to overcome the obstacles that have hindered cooperation with allies, including Japan, which on its own has achieved success on the infrastructure front, to co-finance and coordinate so as to avoid needless competition.

These recommendations will take commitment, political will and resourcing. But if Washington wants PGII to succeed, it will require the White House's strong commitment and a willingness to be nimble and creative in responding to opportunities.

The U.S. has made many promises in a variety of programs on global infrastructure development and consistently under-delivered. PGII must prove it can get things done.

James Carouso leads the advisory board to the Australia chair of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Scot Marciel is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center of Stanford University and a former U.S. ambassador to ASEAN, Indonesia and Myanmar. Both are senior advisers at strategic advisory firm BowerGroupAsia.

APARC is pleased to announce the appointment of Jacques Bertrand, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto, and Reza Idria, an assistant professor in social anthropology at Ar-Raniry State Islamic University Banda Aceh, as our 2022-23 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore (NUS)-Stanford Fellows on Southeast Asia. Bertrand will begin his appointment at Stanford this coming fall quarter, Idria on February 1, 2023.

The Lee Kong Chian Fellowship is the core of the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Initiative on Southeast Asia, a joint effort established in 2007 by the National University of Singapore and Stanford University to raise the visibility, extent, and quality of scholarship on contemporary Southeast Asia. The infrastructure for research pursued through the fellowship is provided by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at NUS and APARC’s Southeast Asia Program at Stanford.

Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford fellows spend three to four months at Stanford and two to four months at NUS, writing and conducting research on, or related to, contemporary Southeast Asia. Fellows have opportunities to present their research and participate in seminars and workshops organized by relevant campus units. Exposure to the two universities and their scholars and resources enriches and diversifies collegial feedback on the fellows’ research projects and facilitates intellectual exchange and networking on both sides of the Pacific.

Meet our new fellows:

Jacques Bertrand is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, as well as director of the Collaborative Master’s Specialization in Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Studies at the Asian Institute within the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Affairs. He was the founding director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at the Asian Institute. He is also the co-founder of the Postcor Lab at the University of Toronto, a research hub for the study of civil wars and war-to-peace transitions. 

Professor Bertrand has worked for many years on issues of ethnic conflict, nationalism, and secessionism in Southeast Asia. His research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the United States Institute of Peace, as well as the International Development Research Centre. His most recent book, Winning by Process: The State and Neutralization of Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar, was published in July 2022 by Cornell University Press. Professor Bertrand is also the author of Democracy and Nationalist Struggles in Southeast Asia: From Secessionist Mobilization to Conflict Resolution (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Political Change in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 2013), and Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia (Cambridge, 2004).

He is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters and co-editor of two volumes: Multination States in Asia: Accommodation or Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Democratization and Ethnic Minorities: Conflict or Compromise? (Routledge, 2014).

Professor Bertrand is leading a new research team on a project entitled “Return to Civil War: Insurgent Groups and the Decision to Abandon Peace.” Funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the United States Institute of Peace, this project aims at understanding why rebel groups return to war after periods of relative peace. While the focus of civil war recurrence has often been on failures of peace agreements, this project will analyze rebel groups themselves and their strategic decisions to return to war or invest in peace. More specifically, it aims at better understanding how different legacies of war lead to varying trajectories in the post-war context. The bulk of the research involves a qualitative analysis of several cases in Southeast Asia. Bertrand builds on his vast experience of studying ethnic armed groups in Myanmar to lead new fieldwork focused on understanding variance among these groups.  
 

Reza Idria is an Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology at the Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN) Ar-Raniry (Ar-Raniry State Islamic University) in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. He holds an MA and Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Harvard University as well as an MA in Islamic Studies from Leiden University, The Netherlands. Born and raised in Aceh, the only province adopting Sharia Law in Indonesia, Reza’s research interests are at the intersection of legal anthropology and Islamic law.

During his LKC NUS-Stanford fellowship, he will turn his doctoral dissertation, “Tales of the Unexpected: Contesting Syari’ah Law in Aceh, Indonesia,” into a book manuscript. This work is an anthropological study that examines a wide range of social and political responses that have emerged with the state implementation of Sharia (Islamic law). The empirical data for this research project has been gathered in Aceh, the only Indonesian province that has adopted Sharia. Dr. Idria is also embarking on a new research project that focuses on the legal and socio-economic consequences of the local regulation on Islamic banking.  

Idria is a reviewer for the journals American Ethnologist, Asian Medicine, and Asia Pacific Studies. He publishes in national and international journals, edits and writes book chapters in scholarly publications, gives talks, and facilitates training on issues of his interests and expertise. Besides teaching and researching, Reza is renowned for his contributions as a human rights defender and a facilitator of several cultural communities and critical study groups in Aceh. He is the Chair of the Aceh Association of Oral Tradition, and a member of the Indonesian Young Academy of Science (ALMI).

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to invite applications for a suite of fellowships in contemporary Asia studies to begin fall quarter 2023.

The Center offers postdoctoral fellowships that promote multidisciplinary research on contemporary Japan and contemporary Asia broadly defined, inaugural postdoctoral fellowships and visiting scholar positions as part of the newly launched Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab, and a fellowship for experts on Southeast Asia. Learn more about each opportunity and its eligibility and specific application requirements:

Postdoctoral Fellowship on Contemporary Japan

Hosted by the Japan Program at APARC, the fellowship supports research on contemporary Japan in a broad range of disciplines including political science, economics, sociology, law, policy studies, and international relations. Appointments are for one year beginning in fall quarter 2023. The application deadline is December 1, 2022.
 

A week after Myanmar’s military junta executed four democracy activists, foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) concluded a meeting in Phnom Penh without an agreement about how to push member Myanmar into enacting a crisis resolution plan. Meanwhile, the political, humanitarian, and economic crisis in the country triggered by the coup continues with no end in sight, and the people of Myanmar feel abandoned by the international community.

Scot Marciel, the Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at APARC, recently examined the criticisms that can be leveled at the world’s response to the ongoing crisis. On July 25, 2022, Marciel testified at a special oral hearing of the International Parliamentary Inquiry for Myanmar (IPI), which brings together members of parliaments from Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas to assess the response of international actors to the crisis in Myanmar and offer recommendations to address the urgent needs in the country. Watch the testimony below: