De/Centering Southeast Asia

Dr. Syed Farid Alatas, a Malaysian national, is a Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He lectured at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies prior to joining NUS. He works on historical sociology, the sociology of social science, the sociology of religion, and inter-religious dialogue. He is a leading voice in critical scholarship, advancing the intellectual movement for an autonomous social science tradition in Asia, freeing scholarship from domination by a hegemonic external intellectual tradition rooted in colonialism. Alatas is the author of Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (2014, Routledge Advances in Sociology) and Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism (2006, Sage).

• Co-founder and coordinator, SEASREP (Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program) Foundation, an organization of Southeast Asian scholars aimed at promoting Southeast Asian studies in the region, since 1995
• Chair, National Historical Commission of the Philippines, 2011-2016
• Consultant, Technical Advisory Committee for Promoting Inter-cultural Dialogue and a Culture of Peace in Southeast Asia through Shared Histories, UNESCO Bangkok, 2015-2019
• Member, International Advisory Committee, Sojourn, refereed bi-annual journal of the Regional Social and Cultural Studies program, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2002-2012
• Member, Steering Committee, South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of Development (SEPHIS), international program funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Development Cooperation to encourage social scientists in Africa, Latin America and Asia to do comparative historical research, 2003-2008

(b. 1941) Trained in Composition and Conducting at the University of the Philippines, got his Master of Music degree at Indiana University and his Ph.D. degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He was a full fellow at the Summer Courses in New Music at Darmstadt, Germany, and undertook post-graduate work in Ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois under grants from the Ford Foundation and the Asian Cultural Council.  He was Chair and now Member of Honor of the Asian Composers League and elected Vice President of the International Music Council at UNESCO from 2001 to 2005, the first Filipino in the five-person Praesidium of the highest governing body of the international music community. He was awarded National Artist for Music in 2014.

• His compositions-commissioned and performed locally and internationally-incorporate ‘western’ and Asian aesthetics
• Has conducted extensive research on Philippine and Southeast Asian musical and aesthetic traditions, which he incorporates in his compositions
• Has published extensively on Philippine and Southeast Asian musical traditions, including Laon Laon: Perspectives on Transmission and Pedagogy of Musical Traditions in Post-colonial Southeast Asia (2012) and Sonic Orders in ASEAN Musics (2003)
• Held leadership positions in the University, local civil society organizations and international organizations, including the International Music Council
• Organized international festivals promoting Southeast Asian performance traditions, most notably the International Rondalla Festivals and Gongs and Bamboo Festival
• Led the Philippine delegation and was Director of the ASEAN Youth Music camps and Composers Forums, and Asian Composers League Festivals
• Works on the preservation of Asian music—past and present—through the Laon-Laon forum
• Has given keynote and plenary lectures in international conferences such as the International Society for Music Education