Lecture and Talks
Fireside Chat with Prof James Warren
10 November 2025
A personal and scholarly journey across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.
This conversation reflects on five decades of research and teaching on Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean World. Drawing on personal experiences—from childhood memories and Peace Corps service in Borneo to fieldwork across Singapore, Japan, and the Philippines, this discussion explores "passing over" as a framework for cultural empathy and scholarly transformation.
Emphasising interdisciplinary approaches and recovering marginalised voices, it highlights works on slavery, maritime societies, immigrant labour, and environmental history, culminating in research on Philippine typhoons and climate change. It presents a vision for socially engaged context-sensitive historical scholarship.
Speaker
Professor James Francis Warren
Emeritus Professor, Indo-Pacific Research Centre and School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Murdoch University
Emeritus Professor James Warren is an internationally recognized award winning ethno- and social historian who has conducted research in the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan for over four decades. He has held positions at the Australian National University, Yale University, Murdoch University, and, as a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University and the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
He has been awarded grants by the Social Science Research Council, the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and the Australia Research Council and is a Fellow of The Australian Academy of the Humanities. Professor Warren has a number of major publications and received both national and international awards for his outstanding contributions in his fields. He currently coordinates two large multi-disciplinary Australia Research Council Projects concerned with the environmental history of the Indian Ocean World.
Moderator
Clement Onn
Director, Asian Civilisations Museum & Peranakan Museum
Clement Onn is director of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) and Peranakan Museum, Singapore. He joined the ACM in 2008 and became senior curator of Asian export art & Peranakan in 2017. As senior curator, he led initiatives to develop the cross-cultural art collection and organised exhibitions that explored artistic exchanges between Asia and Europe. After his appointment as deputy director & principal curator in 2021, he oversaw major refurbishments to both museums, and played an integral role in advancing their stewardship, education, fundraising, and research platforms.
In Partnerships with
Murdoch University
Asian Civilisations Museum
