May 2026

Natali Pearson is a Senior Lecturer and DECRA Fellow at the University of Sydney, specialising in maritime heritage in Southeast Asia. Her journey into Asian Studies began with a high school trip to Vietnam in 1994, which sparked a lasting fascination with the region. After a year on a language and culture program in central

Professor Ed Aspinall shares his journey into Asian Studies, which began when he lived in Indonesia as a teenager while his father worked as an agricultural scientist in Malang, East Java. This experience sparked a lasting passion for the region, leading him to study Indonesian at school and university, and later become involved in activist