Join us for the launch of Imagining Malaya, a new book by historian Bernard Z. Keo that re-examines the role of the Peranakan Chinese community in shaping mid-20th century visions of an inclusive Malayan nation. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book challenges dominant postcolonial narratives and offers a nuanced perspective on cosmopolitanism, race, and nationalism in the final decades of British rule.

Programme

Book Presentation: 

• Bernard Z. Keo, Assistant Professor in International History and Politics, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies
   

Discussant: 

• Rachel Leow, Associate Professor in Modern East Asian History, University of Cambridge

Practical Information

This event will take place in person and be livestreamed online.
Due to limited seating, registration is mandatory. Please sign up early to request a seat; confirmation emails will be sent to selected attendees ahead of the event.

Bernard Z. Keo is an historian of modern Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on the intertwined processes of decolonisation and nation-making in the post-World War II period. His further research interests include the Malayan Emergency, urban life in the port-cities of Southeast Asia, and transnational networks across the Malay World. 

Rachel Leow is Associate Professor of Modern East Asian History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Murray Edwards College. Her first book, Taming Babel: Language in the Making of Malaysia, explored the ethnolinguistic constructions of Chineseness and Malayness over the colonial-postcolonial transition in Malaysia. Her recent work explores transregional and transnational connections between China and Southeast Asia, and her next monograph, Diaspora’s Horizons, is under contract with Allen Lane.

This event takes place in the context of the Geneva Democracy Week as part of the programme organised by the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy.