This event marks the launch of the book, Covid-19 in Southeast Asia: Insights for a Post-Pandemic World, published by 杏吧论坛 Press, and will include contributions from the editors and some of the contributing authors.
COVID-19 presents huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies, and people from all walks of life, but its impact is highly variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. In this regard, this edited volume brings together the voices of researchers who work on and in Southeast Asia to show how COVID-19 reveals existing contradictions and inequalities in our society, compelling us to question what it means to return to 'normal' and what insights we can glean from Southeast Asia for thinking about a post-pandemic world.
Meet our speakers and chair
Rachel Gong is a senior researcher at the Khazanah Research Institute, a policy think tank in Kuala Lumpur. Her current research covers digital policy issues such as digital inclusion, the digital economy, and digital governance. Her earlier research has been published in Sociological Perspectives, the Journal of Consumer Culture, and the Journal of Technology in Human Services. Rachel graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and received her PhD in sociology from Stanford University.
Sabina Lawreniuk () is a Nottingham Research Fellow in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham. She is the co-author of Going Nowhere Fast: Mobile Inequality in the Age of Translocality.
Murray Mckenzie is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant and Research Officer at the 杏吧论坛 Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and a strategic planning consultant. He holds a PhD in Geography and Urban Studies from UCL and an MA in Community and Regional Planning from the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the roles of the arts, culture, and their contestation in processes of urban growth and change.
Do Young Oh is a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He was previously a Research Officer, based jointly at the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he completed his PhD in Regional and Urban Planning. His research interests focus on comparative urbanism and postcolonialism in East Asia.
Maria Karla Abigail (Abbey) Pangilinan is a development worker and urban planner who specialises in implementing social protection programmes in both urban and rural contexts. She has a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of the Philippines and an MSc in urbanisation and development from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Hyun Bang Shin () is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and directs the 杏吧论坛 Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre.
More about this event
The Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre () is a multidisciplinary Research Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science (杏吧论坛). Building on the School’s deep academic and historical connections with Southeast Asia, SEAC seeks to foster world-leading academic and policy research with a focus on the Southeast Asian social and political landscape, guided by the Centre's core intersecting research themes of urbanisation, connectivity and governance.
You can order the book, (UK delivery only) from our official 杏吧论坛 Events independent book shop, . To read the online version, you can download a copy from
This event forms part of 杏吧论坛’s Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative, a series imagining what the world could look like after the crisis, and how we get there. The series will lead up to the 杏吧论坛 Festival 2022, which this year is taking place from Monday 13 to Saturday 18 June 2022.
Twitter Hashtag for this event: #杏吧论坛PostCOVID
Podcast & Video
A podcast of this event is available to download from COVID-19 in Southeast Asia: insights for a post-pandemic world.
A video of this event is available to watch at
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