Center for Southeast Asian Social Studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada (CESASS UGM) held a meeting on Monday, November 10, 2025, to mark the handover of financial and activity reports.

The meeting was attended by Prof. Dr. Rini Rachmawati, S.Si., M.T., former Director of CESASS, and Dr. Wawan Mas’udi, S.IP., M.P.A., Ph.D., who currently serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences UGM and is now acting as the Caretaker of CESASS, along with the CESASS team.

In addition to the report handover, the meeting also served as an opportunity for Dr. Wawan and the CESASS team to get to know each other and share insights about the center’s activities and direction.

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The Academic Writing Workshop “Techniques and Ethics: Expanding Publication Opportunities in Scopus Indexing Journal” at the Center for Southeast Asian Social Studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada (CESASS UGM) continued into its second day on Thursday, October 23, 2025. The session began with Dr. Dicky Sofyan from the Graduate School of UGM, who led an engaging and insightful discussion titled “Reality in Empirical Research.” With both in-person and online participants, the session was highly interactive and emphasized the importance of perspective in shaping how we understand the world. Dr. Dicky illustrated this using the well-known selective attention video exercise, where participants focused on counting the number of passes made by players and subsequently missed the unexpected appearance of a person in a gorilla suit. This activity highlighted how our attention can limit what we perceive, reminding researchers that what we observe is only a portion of the broader reality.

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“How can we avoid unclear research objectives?” This was the thought-provoking question posed by Dr. Indri Dwi Apriliyanti as she helped participants sharpen their ability to craft clear and focused research questions.

On Wednesday, October 15, 2025, the Center for Southeast Asian Social Studies at Universitas Gadjah Mada (CESASS UGM) successfully held a workshop on Academic Writing titled “Techniques and Ethics: Expanding Publication Opportunities in Scopus Indexing Journal,” bringing together participants from diverse academic backgrounds, such as Universitas Jenderal Soedirman, Universitas Brawijaya, Universitas Airlangga, Universitas Sanata Dharma, UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya, and Universitas Lambung Mangkurat, to strengthen their research and writing skills.

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Timor-Leste was accepted as a full ASEAN member state during a formal ascension ceremony in Kuala Lumpur on October 26, 2025. The moment marks the realisation of Timor-Leste’s longstanding aspiration to join the regional body. Timor-Leste submitted its initial application to join ASEAN in 2011 and was granted observer status in 2022. Timor-Leste’s ascension marks the first expansion of ASEAN since Cambodia joined in 1999 and has been broadly lauded as the crowning moment of Malaysia’s 2025 chairmanship.

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