International Quarterly for Asian Studies, Vol. 56 No. 3
This issue “Scholar(ship) at Risk in Southeast Asia and Beyond” emerges from a collaboration between the Southeast Asian Coalition for Academic Freedom (SEACAF), the International Quarterly for Asian Studies (IQAS), the Berlin University Alliance-funded co2libri project (2021–2025), and its March 2025 Manila School “Reimagining the University”, co-hosted by the Asian Studies Centre, University of the Philippines (UP), Diliman, and the Southeast Asia Research Centre and Hub of De La Salle University in Metro Manila, Philippines.
Wars, military coups, occupations and democratic backsliding have placed universities, scholars, students and entire knowledge communities under unprecedented strain. Across Asia and in other conflict-affected contexts, academic freedom is being pressured by several overlapping concerns.
This issue begins from the premise that academic freedom is not only about the rights of individual scholars; it is also about the conditions under which knowledge is produced, circulated, protected, silenced, displaced and sometimes disrupted. The contributions ask how scholars continue to think, teach, research and build solidarities under pressure. Across cases from Myanmar, Afghanistan, Gaza and Southeast Asia, the contributions examine negotiated autonomy, research cultures under pressure, and forms of transnational solidarity and exile scholarship.
Find the new issue here (Open Access).
Selected articles
Raising the Cost of Repression: Democratic Backsliding and Academic Freedom in the Philippines
Sol Dorotea Iglesias
Reflections on Scholasticide and Epistemicide Testimonies from Myanmar and Afghanistan to Palestine and Beyond
Richard Takhun, Frangis Dadfar, Spanta Mohammedwesam Amer, Andrea Fleschenberg
IQAS (International Quarterly for Asian Studies) has been Germany's leading academic journal on Asia since 1970. It provides a forum for multidisciplinary research on current and historical topics relevant to politics, economics and society in contemporary Asia. It seeks to make the results of social science research on Asia known to a broader public discourse about Asia. The contributions are intended for a public aware that the world's regions and cultures have always been interlinked and, thus, need to be understood in relation to one another. The journal appears quarterly or semi-annually as a double issue in print and an open-access version. The journal is published by the ABI.
All issues are available open access on the website of IQAS.