ASAA 2014 Conference Brochure Cover

The 20th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia just wound up today in Perth. It was a great experience, and featured keynote presentations by South Korean Ambassador for National Security Affairs and Professor of International Relations Prof. Chung Min Lee, and Race Discrimination Commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane.

My own talk was on how much Malaysia’s 2013 election highlighted the tensions present in Malaysian society over what sort of nation it should be, and whether or not it needs its “National Front” to hold itself together firmly enough to prevent this tension from undoing it completely. This kind of analysis needs a bit of distance from the election, however.