New Mandala

Vajiralongkorn is a graduate from Australia’s Royal Military College in Canberra and has trained with the U.S., British and Australian armed services…His Western lifestyle is not discussed openly, thanks again to lese majeste. But people have privately asked whether he has the natural authority to unify the nation, especially given his partisanship towards the military. [...]

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If everything goes according to plan New Mandala will transfer to a new address (asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala) on Wednesday, 28 October 2009. We have enjoyed almost three and a half years on our current site but organisational changes here at the ANU mean that this is a good time to make a new home.  There will be [...]

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Asia-Pacific Week at the ANU will be held from 8-11 February 2010. Applications close 31 October. Tyrell Haberkorn and I will be convening the Southeast Asia group and we encourage PhD, Masters and advanced Undergraduate students to apply. It will be lots of fun!
Here are the details from the Asia Pacific Week website. Go online to apply.
Asia-Pacific [...]

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In February 2010 the Southeast Asian Centre of the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University (ANU), is hosting a workshop on the topic of ‘Intersections of Area, Cultural and Media Studies’.  All of the details on the workshop are available here. The organising committee is seeking expressions of interest from prospective participants.  For further [...]

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From where I sit, I sense an increasing willingness on the part of many journalists to report potentially risky stories about Thailand’s future.  The Independent has joined the chorus with today’s “Thai taboo: what happens when the king has gone?“ 
Little in this particular story will be news to regular New Mandala readers, but it is [...]

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We rarely post job advertisements on New Mandala but given the very specific nature of this position, and our niche in mainland Southeast Asian Studies, I thought it best to make an exception.  I expect that for the right candidate this would be an amazing opportunity.
The advertisement sets out all of the details:
The University of [...]

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Those who hang around the Thailand Internet scene will probably be aware that for the past few years young Thai webmaster extraordinaire Panrit (formerly Nattawud) Daoruang has been locked up in Samut Prakan Central Prison.  Known by the nickname “Gor”, he was recently released.  One of the websites run by his long-time teacher, mentor and [...]

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Earlier this week, Professor Duncan McCargo was announced as the winner of the 2009 Asia Society Bernard Schwartz Book Award for Tearing Apart the Land: Islam and Legitimacy in Southern Thailand.  In August this book was reviewed on New Mandala.  For those intrigued by the other contenders for this award, the list of short-listed titles [...]

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Web censorship regimes in mainland Southeast Asia are a regular topic of discussion here at New Mandala. Of course, anybody who spends time in Burma gets used to the government’s relatively consistent effort to block potentially subversive online material.  And, jokes aside, since the coup of 2006 Thailand has also beefed up resources to clamp [...]

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The short essay I wrote earlier in the week titled “Thailand and lese majeste” has now been translated into Thai.  It is available here.  The comments that follow the translation may be of interest to those who read Thai.

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