The publication Scholar(ship) at Risk in Southeast Asia and Beyond, edited by Khoo Ying Hooi, Bencharat Sae Chua, Sol Iglesias, and Andrea Fleschenberg is now available via Open Access: https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/iqas/issue/view/1711. 

Scholar(ship) at Risk in Southeast Asia and Beyond” emerges from a collaboration between the Southeast Asian Coalition for Academic Freedom (SEACAF), the International Quarterly for Asian Studies (IQAS), the Berlin University Alliance-funded co²libri project (2021–2025), and its March 2025 Manila School “Reimagining the University”, co-hosted by the Asian Studies Centre, University of the Philippines (UP), Diliman, and the Southeast Asia Research Centre and Hub of De La Salle University in Metro Manila, Philippines. It conceptualises academic freedom as the freedom to teach, research, publish and communicate knowledge without undue interference or fear of reprisal, while also encompassing institutional autonomy, the protection of campuses from coercive intrusion, the freedom of academic exchange, and the right of scholars and students to participate in public life. These conditions are increasingly challenged by authoritarianism, democratic backsliding, conflict, militarisation and neoliberal restructuring of higher education. Distinguishing between “scholar at risk” and “scholarship at risk”, the editors highlight both embodied precarity and broader epistemic erosion, including scholasticide, epistemicide, institutional destruction and self-censorship. Across cases from Myanmar, Afghanistan, Gaza and Southeast Asia, the contributions examine negotiated autonomy, research cultures under pressure, and forms of transnational solidarity and exile scholarship.

The project co²libri–conceptual collaboration: living borderless research interaction has been funded by the Berlin Center for Global Engagement of the Berlin University Alliance between 2021-2025. The coperation between co²libri and BCGE continues in particular with a focus on the topic of academic freedom.