From the 9th to 12th of August I am participating in an exciting inter-disciplinary conference organised by the Centre for Geopolitics, Cambridge and the Institute for East Asian Studies, Berkley. The conference is titled “Maritime Asia: The securitization of the China Seas in the 19th to 21st Centuries.” As the title indicates the conference is an attempt to facilitate a trialogue between international history, international relations and area studies.

At the conference I will be give a presentation drawing on a paper co-authored with Scott Edwards. The paper investigates the rise of maritime Southeast Asia as an ocean region. It draws on and advances the securitizing community of practice framework to investigate the rise of a transnational maritime security community that conceives of maritime Southeast Asia in integrated and holistic terms.