Highlands: the Southeast Asian Frontiers (SEAF) Workshop Series 1

Call for Abstract

The Southeast Asian Frontiers Workshop Series #1: Highlands

Virtual + On-site

Yogyakarta, Indonesia, August 18 – 20, 2022

Free accommodation: Selected on-site presenters will enjoy free 4-night accommodation in Yogyakarta.

Travel Grants: We provide limited travel grants (up to Rp 3,000,000 for 10 presenters).

Best Paper Prize: Submit your paper to compete for the Best Paper Prize (Rp 5,000,000).

Frontier is an asymmetric socio-spatial designation imposed by centralized power over marginal places. It carries overlapping meanings and functions: an ever-expanding space sustaining capitalist expansion, the limit of state power and capitalist reach, and an imagined wild and empty space that invites settlers’ imagination of conquest and reward. An imposition of a frontier category over highlands’ nature and people often entails the (re-)ordering of marginal political-economic conditions, sociocultural lives, environment, and human-nature relationships. Various experimentations are embedded in this (re-)ordering, including economic exploitation, technocracy, territory, science, and technology. The SEAF Workshop Series #1 aims at discussing the initiations, processes, and impacts of frontierization of Southeast Asian highlands’ nature and people.

The themes including but not limited to the following:

• Highlands and development
• Highlands and religious change
• Natural hazards and social resilience in highlands
• Highlands and tourism
• Conservation and environmentalism in highlands
• Scientific explorations in highlands
• Political economic change in highlands
• Urbanization/Industrialization of highlands
• Women, resources, and social organization in highlands
• Conflicts on highlands
• Highlanders’ knowledge and cultural production
• The politics of representation of highlands and highlanders

Submission: submit your 300 words abstract along with your full name, institution, and keywords to info@seafworkshop.org.

Important Dates:

• 31 May 2022: Abstract submission
• 25 July 2022: Paper submission
• 18 - 20 August 2022: Workshop

Keynote speakers: Michael Eilenberg (Aarhus University), Tania Li (University of Toronto), and Timo Maran (University of Tartu)

The workshop is funded by the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) and Universitas Islam Indonesia, hosted by the Department of Communication, Universitas Islam Indonesia, and supported by the University of Tartu.