The 45^th Southeast Asia Seminar was held as a closed meeting via Zoom on February 18 and 19, 2022. This year’s theme was “Engaging Transdisciplinarity: Variegated Trajectories in Southeast Asian Studies.” The first day of the seminar (February 18, 2022) was organized in conjunction with the annual conference of CSEAS’s Japan-ASEAN Platform – entitled “Grounded Transdisciplinary Research in Southeast Asia,” while the second day was a stand-alone seminar.

The 45^th Southeast Asia Seminar sought to provide a space for reflection and comparison of varied trajectories of transdisciplinarity in Southeast Asian Studies by, firstly, presenting a selection of “case studies” of transdisciplinarity, and, secondly, encouraging a conversation between up-and-coming and senior researchers. Transdisciplinary inquiry not only requires innovative research methods, but also challenges researchers – many of whom work in relative isolation in so-called “ivory towers” – as well as professional experts – many of whom are disconnected from the broader civil society.

A total of 10 core participants from 6 countries took part in this year’s seminar, they were: Dr. Fanny Caron-Scarulli (France), Associate Researcher, IrAsia, Aix-Marseille University-CNRS; Dr. Xiaobo Hua (China), Associate Professor, China Agricultural University; Miriam Jaehn (Germany), PhD Candidate, National University of Singapore; Thiti Jamkajornkeiat (Thailand), PhD Candidate, University of California-Berkeley; Takahiro Kamisuna (Japan), Ph.D Student, National University of Singapore; Dr. Yuqing Li (China), Researcher, Institute for International and Area Studies (IIAS), Tsinghua University; Dr. Khathaleeya Liamdee (Thailand), Researcher, Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University; Novieta Sari (Indonesia), PhD Student, Newcastle University; Dr. Chyatat Supachalasai (Thailand), Assistant Professor, Faculty of Political Science, Ramkhamhaeng University; Trissia Wijaya (Indonesia), PhD Candidate/External Consultant for UNDP, Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University.

The seminar started with Welcome Remarks by Prof. Hayami Yoko, director of CSEAS, Kyoto University, followed by the introduction to the seminar by Assoc. Prof. Decha Tangseefa, the chair of the seminar committee. After the morning session of getting to know one another and a preliminary discussion on transdisciplinarity, the afternoon session was lined up with 8 presentations from 8 research projects, directly or indirectly supported by the Japan-ASEAN Platform.

The first session was comprised of four presentations: Dr. Cypri Jehan Paju Dale (Post-doctoral Researcher, CSEAS) “We, the Twins of the Dragons”: Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization of Human-Animal-Environment Relations in Komodo National Park, Indonesia”; Program-specific Assistant Professor Dr. Julie Ann de los Reyes (CSEAS) “Rethinking transdisciplinarity: Power, conflict and alternatives in Philippine energy transition”; Assistant Professor Dr. Miles Kenney-Lazar (National University of Singapore) “In the 'development soup': Conflicted ethnography in an extractive frontier”; Junior Associate Professor, Dr. Hart N. Feuer, (Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University) “Co-creating Ecological Entrepreneurship: The Intersection of Transdisciplinary Methods and Experimentation.” Prof. Takeshi Ito from Sophia University was the discussant.

The second session was also comprised of four presentations: Dr. Kwan Soo Chen (National University of Malaysia) “Health impacts from TRAPs and carbon emissions in the projected electric vehicle growth and energy generation mix scenarios in Malaysia”; Dr. Chika Yamada (Post-doctoral Researcher, CSEAS) “Peer involvement in formal care services for people with substance use disorders in Indonesia”; Associate Prof. Ian A. Navarrete (Department of Environmental Science, Southern Leyte State University) “Coping with soil degradation from a transdisciplinary perspective: insights from marginal upland farmers in Southern Leyte, Philippines”; Associate Prof. Moises Neil V. Seriño (Department of Economics, Visayas State University) “Valuing the Role of Mangroves in Protecting Coastal Communities from Super Typhoons in the Philippines.” Associate Prof. Decha Tangseefa (CSEAS) was the discussant.

On the second day, based on more than fourteen assigned readings and the presentations and discussions on the first day, the core participants presented the results of their interweaving of insights from the readings, from the presentations, and from their own research journeys. The discussions covered multiple strands of ideas, some key of which were:

•  An intertwining relation of disciplinarity, area studies, and transdisciplinarity
•  Critical stances on the scientific discourse vis-à-vis knowledge of the marginalized
•  Toward “problem-solving”: bridging the academic and the non-academic worlds
•  Knowledge co-production vis-à-vis the locations of “stakeholders”
•  Dilemma, tension, friction, conflict: transdisciplinarity’s unavoidable textures
•  From epistemological engagements to ethical conundrums
•  Decolonizing transdisciplinarity?

With such strands of ideas and through varieties of objects of study within each core participant’s research endeavor – e.g., border and disease, land use, infrastructure, refugee, the ecosphere, indigenous people, left internationalism, among others – the core participants’ methods, approaches or analytical frameworks were, likewise, diverse: ethnographic research; configurational analysis; intersectionality; philosophy; philology, linguistic and/or literary analyses; new interpretive method, among others. The second days’ presentations and discussions were rich, often exciting, and some were impressively deep. A wide variety of issues, therefore, followed.

The notion of “stakeholders” and their positionalities through certain forms of transdisciplinary inquiries were underlined by some core participants. In the process, various identity contrarieties were articulated or alluded to through the subaltern-hegemonic nexus – e.g., gender (female vis-à-vis male), class (the poor vis-à-vis the rich), nation (indigenous people vis-à-vis the state), literacy (the illiterate vis-à-vis the literate), and life (the ecosphere vis-à-vis the human). Hence, for any transdisciplinary researcher aiming to come to grips with such complex societal and/or planetary landscapes of “stakeholders,” epistemological engagements are inevitable. Moreover, they must also be prepared to grapple with a bewildering array of ethical conundrums resulting from those complicated terrains of positionalities.

Furthermore, some of the core participants inquired whether transdisciplinarity could be employed as an agenda to break the status quo, while others emphasized that transdisciplinarity had to steer clear from any possibilities of colonizing practices, which also included the silencing of marginalized voices or the erasure of their knowledge or worldviews. Some of them, therefore, called for: a) academics’ collaborations with marginalized people; and b) creating spaces for alternative forms of knowledge, which have long been negated or overlooked by mainstream scientific institutions. In effect, the notion that (hi)stories of the marginalized must be (re)written becomes vital. And if transdisciplinarity is to become more imperative as a modus operandi for solving complex societal and planetary problems or crises, some core participants inquired about some effective ways of training transdisciplinarity to the new-generation researchers.

The 45^th Southeast Asia Seminar was organized by a ten-member team consisting of: four senior researchers (Kobayashi Satoru, Michael Feener, Sakamoto Ryota, and Decha Tangseefa); four young researchers (Tsuchiya Kisho, Theara Thun, Matsuoka Sachi, and Takamichi Serizawa); and two staff members (Akedo Masako and Kondo Motoko). The committee would like to express its sincere gratitude to: firstly, the Japan-ASEAN Platform for allowing this year's SEA Seminar to be organized in conjunction with the Platform's annual conference; secondly, the CSEAS staff who supported the seminar activities along the way, especially Kamata Kyoko and Kawashima Junko; and lastly, but not least, Brian Richardson.

Decha Tangseefa
On Behalf of the 45^th SEA Seminar Committee
March 9^th, 2022