Guest blogger and Visiting Fellow in the Department of Media and Communication at LSE, Dr Grace Yuehan Wang writes about ASEAN’s AI Governance guide as it diverges from EU rules, emphasising innovation and cultural sensitivity and discusses the challenges in balancing regional nuances with global AI governance standards. _______________________________________________   ASEAN’s Approach to AI Governance– Defying EU AI Act In June 2023, the European Parliament adopted a negotiating position on the AI Act which aims to facilitate AI investment and innovation and ensure that AI systems fulf ..read more

Vested interests have been actively reclaiming land from Jakarta Bay for speculative real estate development since the mid-1990s. Widespread institutional reforms and a changing urban political economy have invited greater contestation over these plans. However, one prominent developer’s recent success in developing two islands into upmarket properties highlights the resilience of such interests today, writes Henrico Saeran _______________________________________________ Several newly established tourist attractions on two artificial islands reclaimed from Jakarta Bay in the extended Pantai I ..read more

In recent years, the fisheries sector has gained significant global attention in response to challenges such as declining fish populations and overfishing. This has fueled consumer demand for sustainable and traceable seafood, particularly in the Northern European and North American markets. Amid this global shift, Indonesia, as one of the most important fish and seafood producers in the world, has had to balance domestic needs with international sustainability standards. At the same time, the sustainable fisheries sector has also witnessed a demand for more social responsibility, including st ..read more

“The incumbent president and his predecessor opted for this particular kind of accommodation because of perceived and imagined fears of what might happen to them if they were to choose the path of taking down these coalition partners. The coalition partners also appear to have taken a similarly defensive stance, thus perpetuating existing political arrangements among the actors at the expense of democratic reforms”, writes Yen Nie Yong, reviewing The Coalitions Presidents Make: Presidential Power and its Limits in Democratic Indonesia by Marcus Mietzner ______________________________ ..read more

Based on ethnographic research conducted in early 2019 along a ‘corridor’ of the Asia Highway 1 (AH1) in Southeast Myanmar part of the EWEC (East West Economic Corridor), this blog post reflects on a presentation given at the 15th International Burma Studies Conference 2023 hosted by the Myanmar-Institut and the University of Zurich, writes Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre _______________________________________________ Somewhat serendipitously, a month after I had begun fieldwork I found myself working alongside environmental and political groups who had been documenting complaints and issues ar ..read more

The British Museum presented a special exhibition called “Burma to Myanmar”, which explores the complexities of Myanmar’s contemporary art and rich cultural history from the era of dynastic rule through colonialism and military rule. It offers a good start to showcase Myanmar’s art and culture, even if it sometimes feels fleeting, disconnected and dissatisfying, writes Minn Tent Bo _______________________________________________ The year 2023 was the 75th anniversary of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma)’s independence from British colonial rule. The British Museum presented a special exhibitio ..read more

Lost futures however do not mean that they are immaterial or unseeable. In the case of Malaysia and Singapore in fact, these lost futures have, even until now, been the subject of mass suppression as the post-colonial is intent in consolidating its hegemony, writes Armand Azra bin Azlira _______________________________________________ Doing fieldwork research in Malaysia and Singapore for my PhD thesis brought to attention the often-overlooked challenges, as the context of their formation of these nation-states and the implications for international politics are glossed over in the literature ..read more

Animals, both livestock and others (including pets) have long needed state-enacted legal protections for their welfare. In the next post in this series, Aye Mar Win looks at the corpus of laws and legal provisions that are aimed to protect them in Myanmar, and what more can be done for their welfare.      _______________________________________________ Natural resources are those that arise naturally, unaided by human activity, elements or characteristics of the natural world that are useful to people. The economic worth of some natural resources (say, timber) is easi ..read more

From my own search and their shared expertise, I found that the academic literature on Ibanag history, and the indigenous peoples of the Cagayan Valley more broadly, was regrettably scarce. The opportunity to review Stephanie Joy Mawson’s monograph, was a welcome change of pace, and in the first few paragraphs I began to imagine myself alongside her, standing atop the Calvary Hills in Iguig to view the vast expanse of the Cagayan Valley from above, writes Cai Barias, reviewing Incomplete Conquests: The Limits of Spanish Empire in the Seventeenth-Century Philippines by Stephanie Joy Mawson ..read more

Herzfeld’s model of subversive archaism offers us an example of understanding how marginalised groups challenge and subvert authority. Herzfeld is not proposing that any given group needs to fit neatly into the category of subversive archaists, but rather how some groups reach back into the past to offer an alternative future, writes Olivia Porter, reviewing Subversive Archaism: Troubling Traditionalists and the Politics of National Heritage by Michael Herzfeld _______________________________________________ ‘The nation-state depends on obviousness because, in reality, its own primac ..read more