Professor Merlyna Lim spent much of her month of May 2018 in Southeast Asia, delivering keynote/plenary/public lectures, attending research meetings, and conducting field research.
Lim began the Southeast Asian tour in an island of Lombok in Indonesia, where she delivered a keynote speech titled “Sociological Research in a Fast Changing Socio-Digital Landscape” at the Annual Conference of the National Sociology Association, held on 8-10 May 2018.
Following the Lombok event, Lim spent two days, 11-12 May 2018, in southern Thailand town of Krabi, for a board of directors’ meeting of EngageMedia, an international non-profit media, technology and culture organization focusing on Southeast Asia, that uses media and open technologies and work with individuals and communities to mobilize social and environmental justice issues for social change.
From Krabi, Lim flew to Singapore to deliver an opening plenary talk at the “Reformasi at 20: Indonesia, Then and Now” conference held at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, on 14 May 2018. In the event marking 20 years of the anniversary of Indonesian’s reformasi, Lim delivered a talk titled “#WeHaveNeverBeenReformed: Digital Media and Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia” which chronicled her longitudinal research on digital media and activism in Indonesia.
Following this talk, Lim spent the rest of her stay in the region to do field research on her SSHRC-funded project in Kuala Lumpur, Bandung, and Jakarta. In between, she stopped by the city of Bogor on 18 May 2018, to deliver a public lecture at the Department of Communication and Rural Sociology, Bogor Agricultural University,