Professor Evelyn Goh leads scholarly engagement in Southeast Asia

Over July and August, Professor Evelyn Goh led a delegation of Coral Bell School postdoctoral fellows and graduate students across two major international conferences in Southeast Asia, presenting original research on Asian security and contributing to discussions on regional order, Southeast Asian agency, major-power relations and foreign policy.

At SEASIA 2026, held at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore from 8 to 10 July, Professor Goh, Dr Emirza Syailendra and Tommy Chai represented SEAI. Professor Goh convened the roundtable "Forms of Agency in Southeast Asia's Regional Order-Building," where Tommy presented on strategic autonomy and great-power rivalry as positional resources within the region, and Emirza spoke on restraint as a tool for power legitimation amid uncertainty. Both also contributed to the panel "China's Influence in Southeast Asia: Constraints and Contestation."

Weeks later, Professor Goh led a larger Bell School delegation to ICON-IR 2026 in Bandung, Indonesia, held at Parahyangan Catholic University from 20 to 21 August. She joined the conference as a lead plenary speaker alongside other prominent figures, including former Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The delegation, comprising Dr Emirza Syailendra, SDSC HDR students Tommy Chai and Kevin Thow, recent SDSC graduate Jascha Ramba, and recent International Relations graduate Arrizal Jaknanihan, presented individual research across the two-day program.

On the first day, Emirza examined Javanese political culture and status-seeking in Indonesia's foreign policy under President Prabowo Subianto, while Jascha explored how Indonesia turns alignment with a major power into strategic leverage. On the second day, Emirza moderated a closed panel on emerging geoeconomic logics under US-China rivalry, featuring papers from Arrizal on Indonesia's economic diplomacy, Tommy on supply-chain repositioning in Southeast Asia, and Kevin on techno-nationalism and lesser-power agency in the region.

Together, the two conferences reflect the depth of Bell School engagement with Southeast Asian scholarship, and the growing profile of its postdoctoral fellows and graduate researchers within the field.