A Genealogy of Southeast Asian Studies in Australia: Scholars and their Works

Southeast Asian studies have developed to become a considerable field of study in Australia. Southeast Asia, as Australia's neighbouring region, has been the focus of national interest and this interest has encouraged considerable research and teaching in Australian universities for several decades. Yet “Southeast Asian Studies” as a whole has never been a unified subject of investigation nor can the study of Southeast Asia be extricated from other specific fields of research. Many of the individuals who have made the greatest contribution to the general field of Southeast Asian Studies have seen themselves primarily as contributors either to a particular discipline such as anthropology, politics, economics or demography or to the study of a particular country within Southeast Asia.