IIAS Receives Grant for a New Educational Initiative: The Southeast Asia – Africa Platform (SEA-A)
We are pleased to announce that the Henry Luce Foundation, New York, has awarded the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and its Southeast Asian and African partners – Airlangga University (Indonesia), Kasetsart University (Thailand), University of Ghana (Ghana), University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) – a groundbreaking educational new grant of US$420,000 that will support a collaborative Southeast Asia-Africa Curriculum Development initiative under the programme ‘Southeast Asia-Africa Platform’ (SEA-A).
SEA-A is an integral component in IIAS’s broader South-South-North (S-S-N) vision which articulates multi-centered approaches to knowledge-sharing across various contexts, regions, and fields of knowledge. S-S-N underpins the operational paradigm of many current IIAS-initiated projects and networks. Over time, these arrangements often crystallize into vibrant coalitions of like-minded partners, capable of leveraging each other’s engagement to create innovative capacity-building initiatives like the new SEA-A. Other key partners in this experimental undertaking include: Howard University (United States); Leiden University (The Netherlands); Northern Illinois University (United States); Singapore University of Social Sciences (Singapore). SEA-A is meant to include other institutions from different world-regions.
The educational programme will facilitate the joint development of thematic curricular tracks by supporting meetings with faculties, non-academic actors (e.g., artists, community, and indigenous leaders), and knowledge infrastructure personnel (e.g., librarians, publishers, and curators). The programme will be organized around three interdisciplinary themes:
- Southeast Asia and Africa as Global South - Comparisons and Connections
- Ecological Sustainability and Justice
- Communities (Vernacular and Indigenous) Knowledges
SEA-A relies on IIAS’s long experience in brokering inclusive, transformative, inter-regional alliances. At its core, the initiative should embrace different sectors of knowledge through the methodological acts of comparison and the search for hidden connections between the two regions, including the worldviews of minority and indigenous social groups. SEA-A represents a milestone in the elaboration of a new S-S-N horizontal and circular pattern of inter-regional knowledge collaboration.