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IIAS NewsIIAS offers an award for the best MA Thesis in the field of Asian Studies, written at a Dutch university
The award consists of:
Criteria:
Dr Peycam is a historian by training. He received his MA (DEA in French) from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne University in Paris. At the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, he wrote his PhD thesis: Intellectuals and Political Commitment in Vietnam: the Emergence of a Public Sphere in Colonial Saigon (1916-1928). From 1999 to 2009, Dr Peycam was the (founding) Executive Director of the Center of Khmer Studies in Siem Reap. This research centre supports the largest academic network on Khmer and Mainland Southeast Asian studies in the world. As Director, Dr Peycam gained extensive experience in institution building, management, designing and overseeing multidisciplinary programmes, raising funds from public and private sources as well as organising community-oriented initiatives and civil society support-programmes.
IIAS has become partner in a new network called JARAK, the Jatropha Research and Knowledge network on claims and facts concerning socially sustainable jatropha production in Indonesia. Jatropha is crop that seems very promising: it can be used as a clean non-fossil diesel fuel and it can provide new income sources in marginal areas that will grow the crop. The promise has already inspired millions of dollars of realised investment in jatropha plantations and many plans for more announced in newspapers and conferences. In only a few years, an ordinary hedge plant known in Indonesia as jarak pagar, has been turned into a valuable commodity for energy production: jatropha. What casued this rapid process of commoditisation? What are the environmental requirements and consequences? How can local producers and labourers benefit from the prospective profits?
IIAS celebrated a milestone recently with the publication of the 50th issue of the IIAS Newsletter. And what better way to mark the occasion than by unveiling a new look and a new name for the newspaper. 'The Newsletter', as it is now called, was re-launched on 8 April at the Snouck Hurgronje Huis in Leiden. Among the guests was Prof. Paul Van der Heijden, Rector Magnificus and Chairman of the Leiden University Board. Prof. Van der Heijden received the first copy of Newsletter #50 from Editor, Anna Yeadell.
IIAS and the Needham Research Insitute (NRI) at Cambridge University, UK, recently received a grant to establish a network of European scholars studying the history of science in Asia. |
As of 1 April 2010, Dr Philippe Peycam will be the new Director of the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS).