On 21 October 2023, SEASREP held a meeting in Makati City, Philippines with the directors of selected Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies Research Centers in the region. The meeting, the first of its kind for SEASREP, was a follow-up activity to its previous project, “Scanning the Landscape of Southeast Asian Studies in Southeast Asia.”
The project aims to examine the state of conservation in the region, laws and policies on conservation, methods and standards of conservation of both built and movable heritage, heritage management with focus on the role of stakeholders.
The project explores the emerging field of public history in Southeast Asia, its principal actor(s) and audience(s), the processes of engagement across various segments of the public, relations between academic and public historians, and the opportunities that public history offers toward more inclusive histories of the region.
The project explores the historical and contemporary role of hybrid communities in Southeast Asia, the evolution of their identities, and the prospects for sustaining hybrid identities in the face of national identity building.
The project is a multidisciplinary study of the history of Hansen’s disease in the region and consists of three parts: historical narratives of leprosy during the colonial period and the Second World War; treatment and management of the disease since independence; and folk perceptions and religious beliefs about leprosy.
The project examines how conservation and heritage practices in the past and in contemporary times have contributed to an identity, whether articulated in a national, local, ethnic, or religious sense, with focus on natural parks, preserves, and other significant environmental spaces.
