Stanford University

From Vision to Action: Pathways to a Sustainable Future in Southeast Asia

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Portraits of Gaea Morales and Yasmin Wirjawan.

Southeast Asia is one of the most climate change-vulnerable regions in the world. However, compounding the climate crisis are socioeconomic and geopolitical challenges that shape the unequal distribution of ecological burdens across communities. In this seminar, Yasmin Wirjawan and Gaea Morales explore where these intersecting vulnerabilities create opportunities for policy innovation and meaningful change across sectors and levels of governance.

Wirjawan discusses the importance of regional digitalization initiatives in fostering climate resilience, with a focus on addressing gender-based differences in mobile connectivity among youth NEET (not in education, employment, or training). She will also evaluate the strategic implications of the recently published ASEAN Community Vision 2045 within the framework of regional demographic shifts and digital transformation in advancing social inclusion. Meanwhile, Morales provides insights on how local governments in the region are responding to the climate crisis through norm “localization,” drawing on the example of city-level adoption of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

By exploring the collaborative nature of these planning practices, the case studies demonstrate how local governments fill resource and technical state capacity gaps, and in doing so develop innovative climate action projects through city-to-city learning and advocacy networks. Together, both presentations highlight the agency of local communities and governments in paving the way for the region’s sustainable future from the bottom up. 
 

Speakers
 

Headshot of visiting scholar Yasmin Wirjawan

Yasmin Wirjawan joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as a visiting scholar from 2024 to 2026. Her research focuses on economic participation and climate change resilience among women and youth in Southeast Asia. She has over 20 years of experience serving on corporate and nonprofit boards across diverse industries. She also serves as Independent Commissioner of TBS Energi Utama, Advisor to Ancora Group and Sweef Capital, and leads the Ancora Foundation. Wirjawan holds a Doctor of Education in Leadership and Innovation and a MSc in Management and Systems from New York University. She also earned a MSc in Finance from Brandeis University and BA in International Business from the American University of Paris.

Headshot of Shorenstein postdoctoral fellow Gaea Morales

Gaea Morales is the 2025-26 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia at APARC. Her work studies how global norms translate into local action, with a focus on cities, global environmental governance, and human rights. Her book project explores both the motivations and mechanisms by which cities “localize” (i.e., translate) environmental norms using case studies of Southeast Asia’s coastal capitals. She received her MA and PhD in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Southern California, and her BA in Diplomacy and World Affairs and French Studies from Occidental College. Her work is also informed by past experiences in international and local agencies, including UNDP Philippines and the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of International Affairs. In Fall 2026, she will join Loyola University Chicago as the Helen Houlahan Rigali Assistant Professor of Political Science.

Gaea Morales

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Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia, 2025-2026
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Gaea Morales joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow on Contemporary Asia for the 2025-2026 academic year. She is a political scientist specializing in global environmental governance, with a focus on the intersection of global and local climate politics in Southeast Asia. Gaea’s dissertation and book project, “Agents of Mass Construction: How Cities Localize through the Sustainable Development Goals,” asks why and how cities choose to translate global agreements to shape local policy, a process known as “localization.”

The project explains both the motivations and mechanisms by which cities localize environmental norms using case studies of three climate-vulnerable coastal capitals: Jakarta, Indonesia; Metro Manila, Philippines; and Bangkok, Thailand. Drawing from a global dataset of SDG localization and a year of fieldwork across Southeast Asia, the project illuminates how cities engage in a dynamic process of policy implementation that is both locally-driven and globally-informed.

At APARC, Gaea will revise her book project and adapt her dissertation into an article manuscript. She will also pursue further projects that cross-cut issues of local and global governance, the political economy of climate and the environment, and human rights. She is especially interested in topics of urban disaster resilience, inclusive climate finance, and environmental migration and security within and beyond the Asia-Pacific region.

Gaea completed her MA and PhD in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, and holds a BA in Diplomacy and World Affairs and French Studies from Occidental College. 

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Yasmin Wirjawan

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Visiting Scholar at APARC, 2024-2026
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Yasmin Wirjawan joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as a visiting scholar from 2024 to 2026. Her research focuses on economic participation and climate change resilience among women and youth in Southeast Asia. She has over 20 years of experience serving on corporate and nonprofit boards across diverse industries. She also serves as Independent Commissioner of TBS Energi Utama, Advisor to Ancora Group and Sweef Capital, and leads the Ancora Foundation. 
 
Wirjawan holds a Doctor of Education in Leadership and Innovation and a Master of Science in Management and Systems from New York University. She also earned a Master of Science in Finance from Brandeis University.
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Entangled Oligarchies: The Hidden Deals Reshaping US-China Power Relations in Offshore Financial Centers

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Flyer with headshot of Kimberly Kay Hoang for event: Entangled Oligarchies: The Hidden Deals Reshaping US-China Power Relations in Offshore Financial Centers

 

This talk uncovers the complex dynamics of Spiderweb Capitalism and Entangled Economies—the intricate financial networks that quietly shape global power. Through sovereign wealth funds, offshore financial centers, and cross-border networks, elites use spiderweb capitalism to remake economic and political landscapes. Focusing on the U.S., China, and Southeast Asia, the discussion will expose how sovereign wealth funds function as strategic tools of economic influence, reshaping America’s liberal democratic system and redefining the balance of global influence. Illuminating these opaque financial networks, this lecture provides a deeper understanding of global political economies and the entanglements of power, wealth, and influence across borders. Prof. Hoang will also bring the research process itself into the discussion. Working with a growing database of 236,000 files, this project uses a locally hosted large language model (LLM) to securely parse and analyze the data while ensuring privacy and accuracy. This talk draws our attention to the ethical considerations related to data handling will be discussed, emphasizing the importance of maintaining security when investigating these complex and often clandestine financial systems, analysis that reveals how these entangled economies affect global growth, sovereignty, and the balance of power in today’s interconnected world.

 

Speaker:

Headshot Photo of Kimberly Hoang

Kimberly Kay Hoang is Professor of Sociology and the College at the University of Chicago. Her research examines deal-making in frontier and emerging economies. Dr. Hoang is the author of two books, Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets (Princeton University Press 2022) and Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work (University of California Press 2015). 

 

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Islamic Environmental Ethics and Multispecies Responsibility in Southeast Asia

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Updated Flyer for Islamic Enviornmental Ethics and Multispecies Responsibility in Southeast Asia event, with headshot photo of speaker Teren Sevea

This event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford Global Studies

 

Are references to religion in this time of climate crisis always cast in nostalgic or apocalyptic terms? This talk turns instead to everyday Islamic practices in Southeast Asia, asking how Muslims, and non‑Muslims in Islamic Southeast Asian contexts, have understood, experienced, and narrated their own times of ecological crisis, resource extraction, and rapid developmental change. It focuses on Islamic environmental sciences and on narratives about communities’ relationships with environments and more‑than‑human beings, relationships marked by care and reverence as well as violence and extraction. I consider how Islamic traditions in Southeast Asia have historically promoted both human‑centeredness and interspecies relatedness, and how these tensions have shaped environmental responses. In doing so, the paper asks how we might learn from Southeast Asian communities about environmental and multispecies responsibility, engaging their ethical grammars and local knowledge, while recognizing that Muslim communities—also implicated in ongoing environmental destruction—are important producers of concepts and practices for living responsibly with a damaged planet.


 

Headshot of LKC Fellow Teren Sevea

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.

Questions?

Contact Kana Igarashi Limpanukorn

Teren Sevea

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Visiting Scholar at APARC
Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia, Winter 2026
teren_sevea.png PhD

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.

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APARC Visiting Scholar Sheds Light on the Cold War Roots of Contemporary Urban Politics in Southeast Asia

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Southeast Asia’s megacities, long viewed as symbols of progress, are facing crises ranging from floods and ecological damage to displacement and widening inequality. Scholars of contemporary urban politics often attribute these predicaments to rapid globalization that originated in the mid-1980s. Yet APARC Visiting Scholar Gavin Shatkin argues they must be understood in the context of the Cold War era, when urban development agendas were molded by authoritarian regimes exerting political and economic control in the name of anti-communism.

Shatkin, an urban planner specializing in the political economy of urbanization and urban policy and planning in Southeast Asia, is a professor of public policy and architecture at Northeastern University. He recently completed his residency at APARC as a Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford fellow on Southeast Asia. Before heading to Singapore for the second part of his fellowship, he presented research from his new book project, which examines how U.S.-supported authoritarian regimes in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand shaped urban politics in three megalopolises —Jakarta, Bangkok, and Metro Manila — during the 1960s and 1970s, with consequences that reverberate today.

Political Violence as Foundation


Shatkin refers to the period from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s as Southeast Asia's "hot Cold War." During that time, in tandem with the armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, political violence spread through Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, as the three countries witnessed the emergence of authoritarian regimes that cemented their rule by manipulating laws and institutions and deploying targeted, often extreme violence justified as necessary to combat communism.

In Indonesia, a U.S.-backed 1965 military coup, directed particularly at the Communist Party of Indonesia, led to the massacre of 500,000 to one million people, heralding General Suharto's 32-year authoritarian rule.

In the Philippines, amid leftist demonstrations and a communist insurgency, President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, marking the beginning of a decade defined by his administration’s widespread human rights violations, throughout which the United States continued to provide foreign aid to the country, considering Marcos a steadfast anti-communist ally.

And in Thailand, the imposition of the 1958 military dictatorship to counter communist threats and the 1976 crackdown by Thai police and right-wing paramilitaries against leftist protesters were pivotal points in establishing a royalist-nationalist model that defined "Thainess" (khwam pen thai) through loyalty to the monarchy, aligned with military power as well as American military aid and counter-insurgency policy guidance.

According to Shatkin, these were not isolated incidents but defining episodes of political violence that cemented authoritative oligarchic control over urban development. The explosive urbanization in Southeast Asian cities that followed in the mid-1980s must be read through the lens of this earlier period, when authoritarian regimes sought to exploit urban transformation to entrench political and economic power.

Urban development takes the form of the linking up of an archipelago of exclusive spaces that reinforces the spatial dichotomy and segregation characterizing these three cities.
Gavin Shatkin

Oligarchic Politics


The Suharto regime's approach to Jakarta as a source of profit exemplifies this dynamic. Shatkin explains how, between 1985 and 1998, Indonesia's National Land Agency distributed land permits for extensive urban development across the Jakarta metropolitan region to a small network of oligarchic conglomerates, such as the Salim Group. These crony corporations, allied with Suharto through family ties and political patronage, came to dominate Indonesia’s economy. Many of these same corporate interests continue to influence development agendas in Jakarta today, owning exclusive rights to purchase and develop permitted land.

The same pattern of successive waves of government expansion of metropolitan regions through infrastructure development and the distribution of land to selected major conglomerates has repeated itself in Manila and Bangkok, creating in-country profit centers for economic interests and what Shatkin calls “an archipelago of exclusive gated elite spaces” that reinforces spatial dichotomy and segregation as each of these megacities also experiences a housing crisis.

For example, Shatkin’s research in Metro Manila during the late 1990s and early 2000s revealed that approximately 40% of the population lived in dense informal settlements. A significant portion of these residents were employed in the nearby container port, yet their wages were insufficient to afford legal housing near their workplace. This discrepancy highlights a structural dilemma where low-wage workers are effectively compelled to occupy land illegally.

Environmental crises in the three urban giants are also entrenched in political and social structures rooted in oligarchic and authoritarian legacies of the Cold War era, argues Shatkin. Thus, increasingly devastating floods in Jakarta, Metro Manila, and Bangkok have less to do with sea level rise and far more with the rapid spread of impervious surfaces and the extraction of groundwater resulting from uncontrolled urban sprawl on converted watershed lands within a relatively weak regulatory environment. Moreover, flooding mitigation solutions, like Indonesia’s Great Garuda seawall project, have perpetuated the same pattern of land giveaways to major developers.

Movements on the ground evoke Cold War legacies in the way that they contest contemporary urban issues.
Gavin Shatkin

Lessons from Urban Social Movements


Crucially, Shatkin's research shows that Southeast Asian urban activists themselves frame their struggles through the lens of Cold War legacies. For example, when Jakarta residents along the Ciliwung River faced eviction for flood mitigation in 2015, they challenged the Jakarta administration and the Ciliwung-Cisadane Flood Control Office in court, arguing the eviction was based on a Cold War-era law drafted during counterinsurgency operations that had no place in democratic Indonesia. They partially won the case.

In a similar vein, Thailand's Red Shirt movement, representing working-class people from the northeast, deliberately protested on land owned by the Crown Property Bureau, using iconography that critiqued the military-monarchy-elite alliance forged during the Cold War.

An example from Manila is the 2001 mass protests by urban, low-income groups in defense of President Joseph Estrada, who was impeached for corruption. Their support can be interpreted as a reaction against “anti-poor” discourse that originated in the Ferdinand Marcos era. For the urban poor, Estrada represented a powerful counterweight to this legacy of elite disdain.

"We need to listen to these protest movements on the ground,” says Shatkin. They do not primarily critique globalization but rather contest entrenched oligarchy and state paternalism forged by Cold War political violence. Thus, an alternative framework for understanding debates in urban politics of Jakarta, Manila, and Bangkok is to view them not merely as capitals shaped by globalization but as Cold War frontline sites.

Beyond Southeast Asia


The implications of Shatkin’s theoretical framework extend beyond Jakarta, Metro Manila, and Bangkok, and even beyond Southeast Asia. It illuminates how periods of political upheaval create enduring social, economic, and environmental inequalities.

Moreover, these three urban giants, which produce outsized shares of their nations' GDP, rank among the world's largest cities. Their futures will not only affect Southeast Asia but also global urban development patterns. Shatkin's work suggests that this future cannot be charted without reckoning with the past.

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People walk through the flooded streets of Kampung Pulo in January 2014, in Jakarta, Indonesia. Severe flooding caused by heavy rains displaced over 40,000 people in northern Indonesia that year.
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Gavin Shatkin, a Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford fellow on Southeast Asia at APARC, argues that prevailing urban development challenges in Jakarta, Metro Manila, and Bangkok stem from Cold War-era political and institutional structures imposed by U.S.-backed authoritarian, anti-communist regimes.

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Reimagining Aid

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It was long assumed that Western liberal democracy and free-market capitalism held all the answers for development and national progress. Today, in the face of growing inequality and global power imbalances, this post–Cold War narrative has faltered. New players on the international scene, many from South and East Asia, have emerged to vie for influence and offer new models of development. Despite these recent changes, however, prominent international aid organizations still work under the assumption there are one-size-fits-all best practices. In Reimagining Aid, Wilks takes readers to Cambodia, a country at the heart of this transformation. Through a vivid, multi-sited ethnography, the book investigates the intricate interplay between aid donors from Japan and the United States, their competing priorities, and their impact on women's health initiatives in Cambodia. Cambodian development actors emerge not just as recipients of aid, but as key architects in redefining national advancement in hybrid, regional terms that juxtapose "Asia" to the "West." This book is a clarion call for practitioners, policymakers, and scholars to rethink what development means in a multipolar world. A must-read for anyone invested in Southeast Asia's role in global affairs and evolving definitions of gender in development, Reimagining Aid is a powerful reminder that the next chapter of global advancement is being written in unexpected places.

About the Author

Mary-Collier Wilks is currently an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She was a 2021–2022 APARC Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia at Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Read our interview with Wilks > 

Advance Praise for "Reimagining Aid"

"Reimagining Aid is a groundbreaking and deeply insightful ethnography that reframes how we understand the global development apparatus. Through richly textured fieldwork, Mary-Collier Wilks exposes the tensions between Western and East Asian donor regimes and the ways in which Cambodian practitioners navigate and rework these competing imaginaries. Essential reading for anyone interested in global health, feminist development, and the shifting geopolitics of aid."
—Kimberly Kay Hoang, University of Chicago

"At a time of Asian ascendance and American retreat from foreign aid, Reimagining Aid centers attention on the power of Asian and Western imaginaries in the development field. A must-read for anyone concerned with how development happens, resistance to hegemony in the Global South, and the ways narratives of progress are intimately bound up with ideas about family, gender, and motherhood. A real tour de force!"
—Joseph Harris, Boston University

"This brilliant, beautifully intimate ethnography challenges the image of post-war Western aid hegemony, illustrating the new regionalized global society in which we live. As Cambodian aid workers navigate between Japanese and U.S. aid agencies and between competing 'regional development imaginaries,' they resist what they see as culturally alien, while creatively reconstructing models of aid, and of gender, for their own societies."
—Ann Swidler, University of California, Berkeley
 

APARC's Monographs Series with Stanford University Press

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Foreign Donors, Women’s Health, and New Paths for Development in Cambodia

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Reckoning the Urban: Cold War Legacies and Contemporary Urban Politics in Southeast Asia

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Reckoning the Urban

Most scholarship on contemporary urban politics in Southeast Asia focuses on the post–mid-1980s period of accelerated integration into global supply chains and finance, when rapid urban expansion generated displacement, ecological damage, and stark distributional conflicts. This presentation asks how shifting the temporal frame to the turbulent era of Southeast Asia’s “hot Cold War” might reshape our understanding of today’s urban planning and development politics.

Between roughly 1965 and 1975, the Vietnam War and the “China scare” prompted an intensive U.S. military and political effort to secure influence in the region. In these years, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand each saw the rise of U.S.-supported authoritarian governments that consolidated power through legal and institutional manipulation, control of knowledge production, and selective—sometimes extreme—violence that was rationalized in the name of anti-communism. Shatkin argues that the explosive urbanization beginning in the mid-1980s must be read through this earlier period, as planning agendas were already being molded by regimes seeking to exploit the immense value produced by urban transformation to entrench political and economic control.

The presentation traces the Cold War’s political and institutional legacies for contemporary urban politics in these three countries, particularly the enduring dominance of oligarchic interests and the relative weakness of technocratic bureaucracies. It concludes that today’s urban social movements in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand often frame their critiques not primarily around anti-globalization, but around the entrenched oligarchy, state paternalism, and economic inequality rooted in these Cold War formations.

Speaker

Headshot of LKC Fellow Gavin Shatkin

Gavin Shatkin is APARC's visiting scholar and Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia for the fall quarter of 2025. A professor of public policy and architecture at Northeastern University, he is an urban planner focused 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 of 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 focuses 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.

Questions?

Contact Kana Igarashi Limpanukorn

Gavin Shatkin

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Visiting Scholar at APARC
Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia, Fall 2025
gavin_shatkin.jpg Ph.D.

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.

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From Crisis to Confidence

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COVID-19 temperature testing in China.

The COVID-19 crisis was a profound stress test for health, economic, and governance systems worldwide, and its lessons remain urgent. The pandemic revealed that unpreparedness carries cascading consequences, including the collapse of health services, the reversal of development gains, and the destabilization of economies. The magnitude of global losses, measured in trillions of dollars and millions of lives, demonstrated that preparedness is not a discretionary expense but a foundation of macroeconomic stability. Countries that invested early in surveillance, resilient systems, and inclusive access managed to contain shocks and recover faster, proving that health security and economic security are inseparable.

For the Asia-Pacific, the path forward lies in transforming vulnerability into long-term resilience. Building pandemic readiness requires embedding preparedness within fiscal and development planning, not as an emergency measure but as a permanent policy function. The region’s diverse economies can draw on collective strengths in manufacturing capacity, technological innovation, and strong regional cooperation to institutionalize the four pillars— globally networked surveillance and research, a resilient national system, an equitable supply of medical countermeasures and tools, and global governance and financing—thereby maximizing pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. Achieving this will depend on sustained political will and predictable financing, supported by the catalytic role of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions that can align public investment with global standards and private capital.

The coming decade presents a narrow but decisive window to consolidate these gains. Climate change, urbanization, and ecological disruption are intensifying the probability of new zoonotic spillovers. Meeting this challenge demands a shift from episodic response to continuous readiness, from isolated health interventions to integrated systems that link health, the environment, and the economy. Strengthening regional solidarity, transparency, and mutual accountability will be vital in ensuring that no country is left exposed when the next threat emerges.

A pandemic-ready Asia-Pacific is not an aspiration but an imperative. The lessons of COVID-19 call for institutionalized preparedness that transcends political cycles and emergency budgets. By treating health resilience as a global public good, the region can turn its experience of crisis into a model of sustained, inclusive security for the world.

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Countering Brain Drain Through Circulation and Linkage: Illustrations and Lessons from China and India

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Task Force Diplomacy

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Building a Pandemic-Ready Asia-Pacific

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Teren Sevea

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Visiting Scholar at APARC
Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellow on Southeast Asia, Winter 2026
teren_sevea.png PhD

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.

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Tariffs to Tech to Transnational Crimes: ASEAN's Strategy for Political Resilience and Economic Renewal

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Portrait of Dr. Suriya Chindawongse, Ambassador of Thailand to the United States.

Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center welcomes Dr. Suriya Chindawongse, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Thailand to the United States, for a timely and forward-looking discussion titled “From Tech to Tariffs to Transactional Crime: ASEAN’s Strategy for Political Resilience and Economic Renewal.”

In an era marked by rapid technological disruption, geopolitical competition, and increasingly complex transnational threats, ASEAN faces both urgent challenges and historic opportunities. Ambassador Chindawongse will explore how Southeast Asian nations are navigating shifting trade dynamics, digital transformation, and emerging security risks—from supply-chain vulnerabilities to cybercrime and cross-border illicit networks. He will also highlight ASEAN’s collective efforts to strengthen regional frameworks, deepen economic integration, and preserve strategic autonomy amid global uncertainty.

This talk offers students, scholars, and policymakers an opportunity to gain insight into the region’s evolving priorities and the role of U.S.–ASEAN cooperation in shaping a resilient and innovative future.

Speaker:

His Excellency Dr. Suriya Chindawongse, Ambassador of Thailand to the United States of America - Royal Thai Embassy, Washington, D.C.

 

headshot photo of His Excellency, Dr. Suriya Chindawongse

Dr. Suriya Chindawongse is a seasoned Thai diplomat and scholar, currently serving as the Ambassador of Thailand to the United States since June 2024. 
He holds a B.A., summa cum laude, in International Affairs, Economics & Business (minor in Mathematics) from Lafayette College, and both an M.A.L.D. (1990) and a Ph.D. (1993) from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Beginning his career at Citibank in Bangkok, he transitioned to the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993. 
Dr. Chindawongse has held significant roles, including Director-General of the Department of ASEAN Affairs, Ambassador to Singapore (2020–21), and Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Thailand to the United Nations (2021–24), where he chaired the UN Sixth (Legal) Committee.

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Contact Kana Igarashi Limpanukorn
His Excellency Dr. Suriya Chindawongse, Ambassador of Thailand to the United States of America
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The Rise of Southeast Asia: What It Takes — Book Talk with Gita Wirjawan

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Cover of the book "What It Takes Southeast Asia" and a headshot of author Gita Wirjawan.

In the current world order, Southeast Asia stands at a critical crossroads. Home to 700 million people and a $4 trillion economy, the region has managed to sustain peace despite its immense diversity. By all measures, it should already be central to global consciousness, yet it remains at the margins.

Through multidisciplinary conversations with leading thinkers and practitioners, we will examine the forces shaping Southeast Asia’s trajectory: education, leadership, economic strategy, sustainability, and its place in the current geopolitical order.

Together, we will reflect on the past, trace the realities of the present, and chart the forward vector. Exploring the collaborations Southeast Asia must forge with neighboring regions and the wider world to unlock its full potential, bringing this region from periphery to core of global consciousness.

Join us for this afternoon book talk event with Gita Wirjawan.

This event is co-sponsored by the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Agenda

12:30 p.m. - Check in opens, lunch served on first come, first served basis

1:00 p.m. - Welcome remarks

1:05 p.m. - Discussion with Gita Wirjawan and David Cohen

2:10 p.m. - Open Q&A with audience

2:25 p.m. - Closing remarks



Speaker

Gita Wirjawan

Gita Wirjawan is a visiting scholar at Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy and formerly a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC (2022-24). Wirjawan is the chairman and founder of Ancora Group and Ancora Foundation, as well as the host of the podcast "Endgame." While at APARC, he researched the directionality of nation-building in Southeast Asia and sustainability and sustainable development in the U.S. and Southeast Asia.

Moderator

Headshot for David Cohen

David Cohen is the co-director of The Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  He is also a leading expert in the fields of human rights, international law and transitional justice, as well as one of the world's leading social and legal historians of ancient Greece. Cohen taught at UC Berkeley from 1979-2012 as the Ancker Distinguished Professor for the Humanities, and served as the founding Director of the Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center, which moved to Stanford in 2013 and became the Center for Human Rights and International Justice. He now serves as the Center's faculty co-director. Cohen holds the WSD-HANDA Professorship in Human Rights and International Justice and is appointed in the Classics department at Stanford. He is also appointed as Professor of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems in the Department of Environmental Behavior Sciences at Stanford's Doerr School of Sustainability.

Questions?

Contact Kana Igarashi Limpanukorn
David Cohen
David Cohen

Gita Wirjawan

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Visiting Scholar at APARC, 2022-24
Gita_Wirjawan.jpg

Gita Wirjawan joined the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) as a visiting scholar for the 2022-23 and 2023-2024 academic years. In the 2024-25 year, he is a visiting scholar with Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy. Wirjawan is the chairman and founder of Ancora Group and Ancora Foundation, as well as the host of the podcast "Endgame." While at APARC, he researched the directionality of nation-building in Southeast Asia and sustainability and sustainable development in the U.S. and Southeast Asia.

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