PEMSEA – Program for Early Modern Southeast Asia

Highlighting this new project page for a collaborative effort from several US universities studying Early Modern Southeast Asia. I will add a link to the resources page.

The University of California-Los Angeles in collaboration with the University of Hawaii-Manoa, and the University of Washington aim to strengthen SEA Studies by establishing a Program for Early Modern Southeast Asia (PEMSEA). This interdisciplinary research program will expand and revitalize SE Asian studies by offering new directions for integrated scholarship through undergraduate and graduate student training, annual interdisciplinary workshops, and logistical support for studies on Early Modern Period Southeast Asia (EMPSEA).

The research program is intended to provide baseline environmental histories from different localities in SE Asia using multidisciplinary approaches. This involves the compilation of paleoethnobotanical/ archaeobotanical, zooarchaeological, dendroclimatological, and sedimentological datasets from various sites in SEA; analysis of dynastic (i.e. Vietnamese, Javanese, Chinese) records of environmental disasters and other significant ecological events in the region; and, survey European colonial documents (VOC, Spanish colonial records) to identify key environmental perturbations.

Source: PEMSEA – Program for Early Modern Southeast Asia