The International Day of the Girl Child (October 11) invites us to reflect on progress and persistent challenges in creating equal opportunities for all young people. While it highlights issues facing girls, it also presents a vital opportunity to unite the broader university community in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through inclusive solutions. Recognizing that SDG achievement depends on diverse voices, perspectives, and collaborative action, this event will cultivate an open, solution-oriented environment for all.

This event requires an RSVP. Please fill out the form linked here.

Sponsored by the Harvard Foundation and Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship. 

Speaker: Federico Sturzenegger, Minister of Deregulation and State Reform, Argentina; Full Professor, Universidad de San Andrés; Adjunct Professor, Harvard Kennedy School (on leave).

Moderated by Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Alisha Holland,  Gates Professor of Developing Societies, Government Department, Harvard University. Frances Hagopian, Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer on Government, Harvard University.

Sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

We will introduce preliminary work towards a research project that, in collaboration with the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile, will look at the Pampa del Tamarugal afforestation initiative. This was a pioneering effort to combat desertification in one of the world’s driest regions, the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. Between 1920 and 1946, nearly 20,000 hectares were planted with tamarugos (Prosopis tamarugo), aiming to restore ecosystems and provide food security in conditions of extreme aridity. Now almost a century old, this initiative offers valuable insights into the long-term evolution and resilience of afforestation in harsh, dry conditions, making it a replicable model for addressing desertification in other regions.

Speakers:

Recipients of the 2024 Harvard-UAI Collaborative Research Grants.

Pablo Pérez-Ramos is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he coordinates the first-semester Landscape Architecture Core Studio and teaches research seminars and lecture courses in landscape theory. He holds a Doctor of Design and a master’s in landscape architecture degrees from the GSD and is a licensed architect from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (ETSAM).

Tomas Folch is a Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Ecology, Landscape and Urbanism –CEPU- of the Design Lab of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago and a Founding Partner at PAUR. Folch earned his undergraduate Architecture and Master of Architecture degrees from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and his master’s in landscape architecture from the GSD.

Learn more about the Harvard-UAI Collaborative Research Grants.

Sponsored by the Chile Office, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. 

We are pleased to announce our upcoming book event for “Latin American International Law in the Twenty-First Century”, which received the 2025 Edited Volume Book of the Year Award from the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA).

Latin America has been a pivotal site for influential and innovative developments in international law since the colonial era. While Latin American states have developed their own approaches to international law and exerted a notable influence on both law and doctrine, they have also, through much of the twentieth century, operated under a distinct set of constraints imposed by the interests of the United States. Today, as the United States recedes on the international plane and geopolitical dynamics shift, scholars and legal practitioners are grappling with the restructuring and potential transformation of international relations—and what this means for international law in the region.

Join a group of highly regarded scholars for a discussion of a new book that explores Latin America’s approaches, developments, and contributions to international law. The conversation will delve into specific advancements in the fields of human rights, indigenous peoples’ rights, transitional justice, and climate justice.

Please register in advance online using the link found here.

Organized by The Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School and sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), La Alianza, and the Harvard International Law Journal.

How can generative AI strengthen investigative journalism rather than weaken it? Drawing on cross-border investigations and newsroom experiments, Sotiris Sideris explores the methods journalists are developing to integrate AI tools responsibly. Sideris will present examples from Greece and Europe’s tourism, pharmaceutical and energy industries to look at what AI can and cannot do in investigative work; how journalists can hold power to account with new technologies; and why transparency and trust remain central in an age of automation.

Speakers: Sotiris Sideris (Fellow, Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University; Data Editor, Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism) and Nicolas Prevelakis (Associate Senior Lecturer on Social Studies & Associate Director of Curricular Development, Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University; Faculty Associate & Seminar Co-chair, Center for European Studies, Harvard University) as chair.

Sponsored by the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies and the Center for Hellenic Studies.

As part of Harvard Worldwide Week, join us for a Literature Panel “African Literatures: Bridging Languages, Places, and Times” on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, 4:30-6:00pm. Join us for a discussionl that explores the power of storytelling across cultures, histories, and generations.; with Zimbabwean Writer – Professor Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Senegalese Novelist – Marietou “Ken Bugul” Mbaye.

Followed by the Literature Panel, and as part of our presentation of events for Harvard Worldwide Week, join us for The 10th Annual Harvard Africa Mixer on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, 6:30-8:00pm. This year, we will be hosting our annual mixer at the Center for African Studies Lounge (left door of Harvard Square Tatte, 3rd Floor). We will have food, music, fellowship, connections, and dancing.

Speaker: Zhongjie Lin, Benjamin Z. Lin Presidential Professor of Urban Design, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.

Amid groundbreaking political reforms and the largest mass migration in human history, China created over 3,800 new towns to house its burgeoning urban population and sustain rapid economic growth. Driven by marketization, global trade, inter-city competition, and an exponentially growing real estate industry, this continuous urban expansion represents the most extensive urbanization initiative in history. Contemporary Chinese new towns have emerged as a national campaign to reimagine the Chinese city and reshape the global geo-economic landscape. This lecture examines four decades of Chinese urbanization through the lens of urbanism and utopianism. Case studies—including the Suzhou Industrial Park, Shanghai’s One City and Nine Towns, and prototypical eco-cities—illuminates fundamental issues of economic vitality, cultural identity, environmental sustainability, and socio-spatial dynamics. Ultimately, the lecture explores the complex interplay between space production and social transformation within the context of neoliberalism and globalization.

Zhongjie Lin is Benjamin Z. Lin Presidential Professor of Urban Design at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, where he serves as Head of the Urban Design program and directs the Future Cities Initiative. An internationally renowned expert in urban planning and design, Dr. Lin has published numerous books on Asian architecture and cities, including Kenzo Tange and the Metabolist Movement: Urban Utopias of Modern Japan (2010/2023), Vertical Urbanism: Designing Compact Cities in China (2018), and Constructing Utopias: China’s New Town Movement in the 21st Century (2025). He was the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Abe Fellowship, and three Graham Foundation awards.

Sponsored by the Harvard Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, and the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning.

Adaptation studies has long occupied an uneasy position between literary, film, and media studies. Its trajectory has been far from smooth, moving from early fidelity criticism to later intertextual studies primarily informed by narratological insights. While earlier scholarship focused on the semiotic or formal dimensions of adaptation, the field is now experiencing a cultural turn, with adaptation increasingly situated within media culture and examined for its cultural implications. Whereas an earlier emphasis on transmedia adaptation compelled attention to the semiotic features of different media, foregrounding topics such as media affordances, the recent cultural turn urges us to consider adaptation’s broader cultural ramifications—not merely as functions of media culture, but as part of wider processes of cultural negotiation and transformation. Transcultural adaptation, an underexplored realm within adaptation studies, offers a unique vantage point from which to understand such negotiation and transformation.

To illustrate the complexity of the process, this talk approaches transcultural adaptation as a politically charged phenomenon with significant narrative consequences. The cultural negotiations involved, which are never neutral, may take the form of borrowing, appropriation, hybridization, indigenization, among others, each producing distinct narrative effects. To demonstrate how these strategies operate in practice, I examine Disney’s adaptations of The Ballad of Mulan—the 1998 animated feature and the more recent live-action film—highlighting the ways in which different cultural strategies leave discernible narrative traces.

Speaker: Wanlin Li, Associate Professor, Peking University; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2025-26.

Chair/Discussant: Karen Thornber, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University; Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard College.

Sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Presentation by Sanele Ntshingana, Mandela Fellow of the Hutchins Center, at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Weekly Colloquium Series.

Ntshingana’s project traces how isiXhosa-speaking intellectuals, thinkers, and activists from 1838 to 1938 conceptualized political authority using vernacular concepts such as umbuso and umthetho during a period of intense social and political transformation in South Africa. It brings renewed attention to figures often dismissed as mere “informants” or “colonial collaborators,” such as Gciniswa Noyi and William Kekale Kaye, and reinterprets more widely recognized thinkers like Tiyo Soga, William Wellington Gqoba, and John Tengo Jabavu—not just as Christian leaders but as significant political theorists. Ntshingana analyzes both their ideas and the ontological frameworks shaping their discourse, while also examining how these notions of authority have been reframed by later historians, translators, and scholars. This multilayered inquiry contributes to African political theory and epistemic decolonization by foregrounding African intellectual traditions in their own terms.

Sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.

David Y. Yang is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Harvard University and Director of the Center for History and Economics at Harvard. David is a Faculty Research Fellow at NBER, a Global Scholar at CIFAR, and a fellow at BREAD. David’s research focuses on political economy. In particular, David studies the forces of stability and forces of changes in authoritarian regimes, drawing lessons from historical and contemporary China. David received a B.A. in Statistics and B.S. in Business Administration from University of California at Berkeley, and PhD in Economics from Stanford.

Sponsored by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Joe Nye served as director of the Weatherhead Center, then named the Center for International Affairs, from 1989–1993. From his theories of complex interdependence to soft power (and beyond), his legacy is vast and he has influenced many institutions, leaders, and political scholarship at large. We hope to touch on these myriad contributions in our Forum event.

Please register in advance online using the link found here.

Sponsored by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

You’re invited to join Prerna Singh, Mahatma Gandhi Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Brown University, for a Global Challenges to Democracy Seminar.

Lunch will be served.

Sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and co-sponsored by the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute.

A presentation from 2025–2026 Maury Green Fellow Ali Kadivar.

Ali Kadivar is a sociologist whose research examines contentious politics, democratization, and authoritarianism in the Global South, with a focus on the Middle East. At Radcliffe, he will work on his project that traces the evolution of political mobilization in Iran since the 1979 revolution, drawing on original historical and quantitative data.

Please register in advance online using the link found here.

Sponsored by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Wednesday, October 15, 12-3pm

Science Center Plaza

Did you know that Harvard has more than 20 offices worldwide? Following last year’s successful initiative, the Information Table returns for Harvard’s 2025 Worldwide Week. It will be staffed by the directors of Harvard’s offices in Johannesburg (South Africa), Nafplio (Greece), São Paulo (Brazil), Shanghai (China), and more, who will be available to answer questions about Harvard’s global presence and network and their home offices’ programming and resources. This year, we’ll also be joined by colleagues in Global Support Services. Come join us to learn more about Harvard’s engagement around the world!

Join anthropologist Manvir Singh, PhD, and Professor Charles Stang for a conversation about Singh’s new book, Shamanism: The Timeless Religion (Knopf, 2025), which draws on immersive research with shamans in Indonesia and the Colombian Amazon. Singh explores how shamans use trance, music, and plant medicine to heal, prophesy, and confront life’s uncertainties—and how these ancient practices reveal deep insights into belief, transformation, and the human mind.

MANVIR SINGH is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a PhD in Human Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University. A regular contributor to The New Yorker, his work has also appeared in Wired, Vice, Aeon, The Guardian, and academic journals including Science and Nature Human Behaviour. He has studied Indigenous psychedelic use in Colombia and, since 2014, has researched shamanism and justice among the Mentawai of Siberut Island, Indonesia.

CHARLES M. STANG is Professor of Early Christian Thought and Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.

Please register in advance online using the link found here.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School.

The fact that Jews and those of Jewish descent played an outsized role in the democratic opposition in Poland in the 1980s, including the Solidarity (Solidarność) movement, has been little acknowledged or studied. This talk explores not only how Polish Jews shaped Solidarity, but how Solidarity shaped Polish Jews. Solidarity served as a space for the reinvention of Jewish identities and a crucial vector of relations with the global Jewish diaspora. Yet these relations were marked by tension and competing visions of diaspora, culminating in the controversies surrounding the 40th anniversary commemorations of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1983. The talk concludes by asking what the story of Solidarity and its Jewish supporters might tell us about broader reconfigurations of global Jewish politics in the 1980s.

Sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and the Center for Jewish Studies.

Interested in a future career in global health? Join us for an engaging panel featuring experts from Harvard Medical School, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Harvard Business School. They’ll share their journeys into the field, the skills that helped them succeed, tips for finding meaningful experiences (in the U.S. and abroad), and their thoughts on where the field of global health is headed.

Whether you’re just exploring or already planning your path, this is a great chance to learn, ask questions, and get inspired! Panelists will share candid insights on refining your focus, landing your first global health job, and overcoming uncertainty. This event includes a Q&A session for you to get personalized advice and discover the wide-ranging career paths and opportunities in global health.

Sponsored by the Harvard Global Health Institute and the Mignone Center for Career Success.

FILM SCREENING from 5:15 – 7:00pm

& DISCUSSION SESSION with Journalist and Documentary filmmaker SHIORI ITO from 7:00 – 7:45pm

Reception: 7:45pm

Journalist SHIORI ITO, the first Japanese documentary filmmaker to be nominated for an Academy Award, will appear in person for a screening and discussion of her Oscar-nominated documentary memoir Black Box Diaries (2024). The documentary chronicles the filmmaker’s ongoing investigation and pursuit for justice on her own sexual  assault case against a leading figure in the Japanese media. In addition to being nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film in the 97th Academy Awards, Black Box Diaries received the Peabody Award and was named one of the top 5 documentary films of 2024 by the National Board of Review. Despite these accolades, the film has yet to be screened in Japan. An interview and discussion session with SHIORI ITO will follow the screening of Black Box Diaries.

Sponsored by the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.

Join us for an inspiring and interactive workshop featuring legendary world surfing champion, author, and leadership expert Shaun Tomson. In a time marked by global uncertainty and rapid change, Shaun will introduce The CODE Method—a transformative framework designed to help individuals turn hope into action, visualization into realization, and desire into lasting commitment. Drawing on personal experience and deep insight, Shaun will guide participants through this powerful tool to cultivate positive, purposeful attitudes that foster resilience and clarity in the face of turbulence. Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with a compelling voice in leadership and personal growth and leave empowered to write your own code for action and impact.

Please register in advance online using the link found here.

Sponsored by Building State Capability (BSC) at Harvard Kennedy School.

As part of Worldwide Week at Harvard, join us for a virtual lecture highlighting the pilot implementation and evaluation of a community health worker training program in Kenya. This virtual session will share key takeaways from the Kenya Project and explore broader implications for strengthening health systems through training and workforce innovation.

The Kenya Project was spearheaded by Dr. Nithya Ramesh, a board-certified public health dentist and graduate of HSDM’s Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology DMSc and Dental Public Health residency programs.

With more than a decade of experience in public health practice, Dr. Ramesh is a skilled educator and researcher whose work focuses on global oral health policy, workforce development, and competency-based education. She currently serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Academic Director of Brown University’s online MPH program, where she provides curricular leadership and oversight of academic affairs.

Please register in advance online using the link found here.

Sponsored by the Harvard School of Dental Medicine’s Department of Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology.

How will a rising China shape international order? This seminar argues that rising powers neither seek to replace the existing rules, nor are they content with following the rules to pursue change from within. Instead, rising powers are cautious opportunists—China shapes international order by commandeering the very rules the U.S. helped create.

Rising powers are sensitive to relative gains because of their competitive relationship with the incumbent. Consequently, they seek to lower the costs of change and increase friction for incumbent pushback. Working with existing rules—being cautious—achieves both goals. This research presents the theory of cautious opportunism, which explains how rising powers like China choose between four strategies that work with existing rules to enact change — (1) drift, which derives benefits by obstructing change to outdated rules; (2) cooptation, which repurposes rules towards new ends; (3) reform, which explicitly changes the content of the rule; and (4) exceptionalism, which mitigates the rule’s negative effects through hypocrisy. Strategy choice is based on the rule’s net utility, precision, and whether China has a high baseline level of support for its desired change.

Only when ‘cautious’ strategies have failed will China assess the costs of creating a new institution and opportunistically wait for a window with lowered risks of incumbent pushback. The speaker tests this argument through case studies of China’s behavior in international trade, development finance, arms control, and maritime issues.

The project advances the power transition literature beyond the simple binary of rule compliance and shows how challengers can appropriate rules created by those in power. It also calls for a conceptual shift in international relations: instead of asking if China is playing by the rules, we should focus on what it is doing to the rules.

Admittance is on a first come–first served basis. Tea and Coffee Provided.

Sponsored by the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School.

This virtual event showcases the impact of the Harvard Global Health Institute’s Scholarly Working Group (SWG) Program, an initiative that brings together faculty across Harvard’s schools, departments, and centers to collaborate on pressing global health challenges. Harvard faculty from current and past SWGs will share how the program has fostered interdisciplinary dialogue, generated key research deliverables, and sparked innovative events and convenings. From advancing health justice in conflict zones to responding to the health threats of climate change and beyond, these working groups exemplify how cross-campus collaboration enhances Harvard’s global health efforts.  Join us to learn how the SWG Program supports intellectual partnerships, builds research communities, and drives forward-thinking solutions in global health within Harvard and beyond.

Sponsored by the Harvard Global Health Institute.

This talk, organized by the Korea Institute, reconsiders the relationship between art and politics, particularly in relation to the aesthetic representation of atrocity. Focusing on the genre of Kwangju fiction, Hanscom asks what kind of remembering is adequate to the traumatic event and how the representation of such memory can avoid both a cycle of endless melancholic return and the forgetting that accompanies the memorization of history.

Sponsored by the Korea Institute.

Innovation stands at a crossroads: While AI and emerging technologies hold transformative potential, current ecosystems often reproduce exclusion and technoableism.

This research project, “Inclusive Ecosystem Development Through Innovation: Disability Entrepreneurship and the Design of an Inclusive Fund at the Kyoto Institute of Technology,” explores how innovation can foster entrepreneurship among people with disabilities and how inclusive funding models can support sustainable ecosystems. Its goal is to develop design approaches that are technologically effective, socially inclusive, environmentally responsible, and adaptable across regions.

Fieldwork conducted in Okinawa, Japan, since 2024 centers on two cases: coral restoration projects involving people with cognitive differences and co-design processes with neurodiverse software teams. Using participant observation, interviews, and co-design workshops, the study tests an adaptive framework guided by “strategic drifting”—a flexible approach that values adjustment, diverse participation, and unexpected insights.

The findings extend beyond Japan, offering lessons for regions such as the South Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, where entrepreneurship ecosystems are expanding rapidly but inclusive practices remain limited. By linking Japanese experiences with emerging economies, this research proposes strategies for inclusive innovation funds, accelerator programs, and ecosystem mapping to empower diverse entrepreneurs and advance sustainable growth.

About the speaker:

Annie Vashakmadze comes from Georgia, a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. She has extensive experience working at the intersection of policy, entrepreneurship, and international collaboration. She served as head of international relations for Georgia’s Innovation and Technology Agency, as an EU European Innovation Council ambassador, and as deputy chair of the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe’s Committee on Innovation.

During these years, she studied how different countries approach technology and innovation. She observed the European Union’s funding mechanisms and accelerator models, witnessed Georgia’s startup ecosystem grow so rapidly that international accelerators began entering the country, and discovered how Japanese innovation places human well-being at its center—more so than what she had seen in Scandinavia or elsewhere.

Sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

Since its founding in 1958 by Harvard and Cornell Universities, the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis has excavated, conserved, and published on aspects of the ancient city of Sardis in western Türkiye from the prehistoric through the Islamic periods. The expedition is one of the longest-running international projects sponsored at Harvard and is one of the oldest classical archaeology projects in the Mediterranean. In July 2025, the ancient city of Sardis and the Lydian Tumuli of Bin Tepe were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The Archaeological Exploration of Sardis has offered students opportunities to gain academic, professional, cultural, and life skills while contributing to the entire process of archaeological research, documentation, conservation, and publication. Each summer the project has over seventy team members, largely from Türkiye and the US, as well as in recent years from twenty other countries.

This Worldwide Week at Harvard 2025 event will introduce activities of the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, highlighting the long-standing involvement of students, and discuss opportunities to participate in the summer 2026 field season at Sardis in Türkiye. Recent Sardis student participants will present about their experience at the site, collaborating with team members from various fields and institutions around the world, and how it has helped shape their academic careers.

Sponsored by the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Harvard Art Museums.

Yosvany Terry, Senior Lecturer on Music / Director of Jazz Bands, is an internationally acclaimed Cuban musician, American composer, saxophonist, percussionist, bandleader, educator and cultural bearer of the Afro-Cuban tradition. Born into a musical family in Camaguey, Cuba, Yosvany Terry went on to classical music training in Havana at the prestigious National School of Arts (ENA) and Amadeo Roldan Conservatory. After graduating, Terry worked with major figures in every realm of Cuban music including pianists Chucho Valdes, Frank Emilio, and the celebrated nueva trova singer/guitarist Silvio Rodriguez. From his earliest days in New York, Terry has been welcomed by the jazz and contemporary music community, playing with Branford Marsalis, Rufus Reid, Dave Douglas, Steve Coleman, Roy Hargrove, Henry Threadgill, Avishai Cohen, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Taj Mahal and Eddie Palmieri Afro-Caribbean Sextet.

The Locke Gallery will close at 3pm on October 16th, and will reopen for event access at 6:30pm via the rear entrance at 95 Winthrop Street, across from Shake Shack.

Please register in advance online using the link found here.

Part of ArtsThursdays: Every Thursday evening, a Harvard arts institution or organization will open its doors to the Harvard community and the wider public for free performances, exhibitions, lectures and other events as part of a presidential initiative that promotes access to the arts at Harvard. ArtsThursdays is a university-wide initiative sponsored by Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA).

Sponsored by the Alain Locke Gallery of African & African American Art at the Hutchins Center and the Harvard University Committee on the Arts.

This talk examines how agricultural practices, food crops, and related knowledge have influenced food regimes operated in Asia throughout periods of imperialism, the Cold War, and globalization. Three interventions are highlighted. First, the case of Ponlai rice (蓬萊米) demonstrates how farmers and agronomists navigated innovation in both colonial and postwar contexts. Second, the edamame case explores contemporary regional trade regimes and changing development agendas, while also reflecting agricultural legacies from the era of empire and the Cold War. Finally, a new emphasis on the geopolitical knowledge regime (地政學) of Japanese colonialism reveals how colonial geographical knowledge was adapted and transformed in envisioning the territorial expansion of the empire. Together, these perspectives advance our understanding of Asian food regimes as dynamic histories intertwined with science, knowledge, and power.

Speaker: Kuan-Chi Wang, Associate Research Fellow, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica; HYI Visiting Scholar, 2025-26.

Chair/Discussant: Victor Seow, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University.

Sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching Institute and the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

Dr. Santitarn Sathirathai, Member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of Thailand, will join us to explore how Southeast Asia is navigating a new wave of globalization—one marked not by retreat, but by transformation. A former Group Chief Economist at Sea Ltd (Southeast Asia’s largest tech company) and Head of Emerging Asia Economics Research at Credit Suisse, Dr. Santitarn brings a rare perspective that spans global finance, digital innovation, and public policy.

While much of today’s conversation focuses on the decline of globalization, Southeast Asia tells a different story. The region is attracting record levels of foreign direct investment, deepening trade ties, rebounding tourism, and experiencing rapid digital adoption. Now, with artificial intelligence on the rise, Southeast Asia once again stands at a global inflection point.

Drawing from his career across finance, tech, and policymaking—as well as his academic roots at Harvard—Dr. Santitarn will reflect on how the region has adapted to previous shifts and how it can seize today’s moment to capture emerging opportunities and manage future risks.

Please register in advance online using the link found here.

Sponsored by the Center for International Development.