New Mandala
Online/Digital
New Mandala provides anecdote, analysis and new perspectives on Southeast Asia. It devotes its attention to the politics and societies of Southeast Asian countries, and their connections with one another. New Mandala has a proud record of contribution to scholarly and popular debates and played a pioneering role in the digitisation of Southeast Asian studies.
New Mandala is hosted by the Australian National University’s (ANU) Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs in the College of Asia and the Pacific. The editor of New Mandala is Dr Liam Gammon. Source
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| Scope | International |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | Australia |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesHerstory between borders
In October 1822, Dutch troops landed on Pulau Penyengat, a tiny island south of Singapore in the Riau archipelago. The island had been granted to Engku Puteri Raja Hamidah upon her marriage to Sultan Mahmud Shah III, whose death in 1811 triggered a decade-long succession crisis that became a stage for the Anglo–Dutch contest for influence within the Riau–Johor sultanate.
“Murni top-down”: a look at Prabowo’s village cooperatives
Drive almost anywhere in rural Indonesia now and it’s hard to miss them: prominent red-and-white buildings, based on a uniform 30 by 20 metre layout, all with the same centrally-designed features and deposited on whatever land the village administration was willing to hand over. Some sit isolated near forests or fields, whilst others have been squeezed into village hall forecourts so that staff grumble about picking their way around the building to reach their office.
Timber, tycoons and the making of Sarawak politics
In this long-awaited book, Ngu Ik Tien, a senior lecturer in Chinese Studies at Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, offers a cogent and compelling account of politics in a Malaysian state with a political history like none other: Sarawak. The account complements a mere handful of book-length studies of the state’s politics—most notably James Ung-Ho Chin’s 1996 Chinese Politics in Sarawak: A Study of the Sarawak United People’s Party and Faisal S.
ACICIS from the Cold War to New Colombo Plan
Editor’s note: this essay is an edited excerpt of the author’s chapter in a new volume from ANU Press, Experiencing Indonesia: 30 years of ACICIS, which contains reflections on the origins and achievements of the Australian Consortium for “In-Country” Indonesian Studies (ACICIS) since its establishment in 1994. • • • • • • • • Indonesian studies as an academic field in Australia originated in the mid-1950s amid the geopolitics of the Cold War.
ACICIS’ place in Australia’s Asia literacy
Editor’s note: this essay is an edited excerpt of the author’s chapter in a new volume from ANU Press, Experiencing Indonesia: 30 years of ACICIS, which contains reflections on the origins and achievements of the Australian Consortium for “In-Country” Indonesian Studies (ACICIS) since its establishment in 1994. • • • • • • • • When ACICIS sent its first outbound cohort of students to Indonesia in 1995, it was a time of considerable national debate on Australia’s “Asia literacy”.
The end of an era for Vietnamese labour journalism
On 30 June 2026, the Người Lao động (Labourer) newspaper published its final issue after 51 years, one of eight Vietnamese newspapers to cease publication as part of a broader state media restructuring plan. Người Lao động, however, wasn’t just a fairly nondescript newspaper conveying the views of the one-party state. It played an extremely important role in labour relations and labour politics as one of the two major labour newspapers in the country, along with Lao động (Labour).
The backlash against NU’s religious diplomacy
On 24 August 2025, the former academic Peter Berkowitz delivered a lecture at the National Leadership Academy (AKN NU), the highest tier of cadre training by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia’s largest Islamic mass organisation. Berkowitz, now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, served as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department during Donald Trump’s first presidential administration and maintains extensive ties to pro-Israel and neoconservative foreign policy networks.
Bangkok’s election puts policy competence over ideological cleavages
On 28 June approximately 4.5 million voters in Bangkok will choose a new governor and Bangkok Metropolitan Council. On the surface the outcome looks predictable: polls consistently show incumbent Governor Chadchart Sittipunt leading his nearest rival by more than fifty percentage points, and analysts have described the atmosphere as quieter than the charged contest of 2022. Yet the gubernatorial election remains one of Thailand’s most closely watched political contests.
ณ จุดปะทะทางอุดมการณ์: การปลูกฝังและการต่อต้านในหลักสูตรรักษาดินแดน
ในประเทศไทย หลักสูตรรักษาดินแดน (รด.) เป็นสิ่งที่ผู้คนคุ้นเคยกันเป็นอย่างดี นักเรียนระดับมัธยมศึกษาของไทยประมาณร้อยละ 15 เข้าร่วมหลักสูตรนี้ โดย รด. รับนักเรียนใหม่ (ซึ่งเรียกว่า “นักศึกษาวิชาทหาร” หรือ นศท.) ประมาณ 100,000 คนต่อปี และเนื่องจากผู้เข้าร่วมต้องศึกษาในหลักสูตรต่อเนื่องหลายปี ทำให้กองทัพมี นศท. อยู่ใต้บังคับบัญชารวมประมาณ 300,000 คนในแต่ละปี อดีตผู้บัญชาการทหารบก พล.อ. อภิรัชต์ คงสมพงษ์ เคยกล่าวถึงความสำคัญของ รด. โดยระบุว่ากำลังพล นศท.
20 years of New Mandala
20 years ago today, Andrew Walker’s post “Some thoughts on the political crisis in Thailand” became the first piece of writing to appear at New Mandala. It was a different era for Southeast Asia, and a different era for Southeast Asian studies. Most of all it was a different (and let’s face it, much better) era for the internet.