Thiti Jamkajornkeiat
Assistant Professor
Credentials
Ph.D., South & Southeast Asian Studies (Critical Theory Designated Emphasis), University of California-Berkeley
BA, Thai Language and Literature, Chulalongkorn University (Thailand)
Research Interests
- Comparative Southeast Asian intellectual history
- Modern Indonesia and Thailand
- Peripheral Marxism
- Anti-/post-/decolonial theories
Biography
I am a comparative Southeast Asianist specializing in the intellectual history of revolutionary Southeast Asia and the Global South, with an emphasis on Indonesia and Thailand. I am a native speaker of Thai and fluent in Bahasa Indonesia. My interdisciplinary research is directed towards the tripartite objective of decolonizing Southeast Asian studies, reconstructing radical political theories from Global Asias, and advancing social justice in Southeast Asia. These three orientations foster a novel research paradigm that positions Southeast Asia as a global locus of knowledge co-production and prioritizes the livelihoods of Southeast Asians. I teach courses on activism, social justice, public humanities, and anticolonialism in 20th and 21st-century Asia.
My intellectual inquiry into Southeast Asian knowledge production aligns with my theoretical interests in Marxist political theory, postcolonial geography, and Inter-Asia cultural studies. My recent publications, presentations, and organizing efforts are directed towards re-centering the interdisciplinary conversations on Global Southeast Asias—employing the plural form 'Asias' to encompass Southeast Asian diasporas across the globe. My work has been published in Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, Spectre, positions: politics, Verge, and upcoming in Critical Times. I am a board member of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society and an editorial member of positions: asia critique collective. I co-organized the and .
My first monograph recounts the intellectual history and political theory of left internationalism in Indonesia during the Bandung era. It argues that the 1955 Bandung Conference’s Afro-Asian connectivity enabled Indonesian radicals to formulate a left internationalist framework capable of coordinating global struggles against capitalist empires in the aftermath of the Comintern’s dissolution. I have been concurrently developing a conjunctural framework of “Internationalist Southeast Asias” to historicize internationalist struggles against colonial capitalism in Global Southeast Asias throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Selected Publications
2025 “,” Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 41 (1 Sep.). [online].
- This special issue is among a few focusing on the Indonesian Left, wherein all contributors are Indonesian and each essay is translated into seven Asian languages. The varied scholarly interests indicate a shift in the material conditions of research from deconstructive critique to critical reconstruction.
2024 “,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 10, 2 (Fall): 7-13.
- I employ a geographical-materialist perspective to develop a relational understanding of Southeast Asia that facilitates the coordination of dispersed internationalist struggles within the region and enables its continuous redefinition.
2024 “,” positions:politics Issue 10: Maoism on the Move (Jan.). [online].
- I argue that wartime Lenin provides a theoretical foundation for “global Maoism” that constitutes Third World Marxism’s anti-imperialist praxis.
2020 “,” Spectre (3 Dec.). [online].
- This essay engages Thai Marxist Jit Phumisak in dialogue with historian Thongchai Winichakul to elucidate the systemic contradictions between the “feudalists” (sakdina) and “the people” (ratsadon) that characterized the protests in 2020-21.
2017 “,” Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia 21 (Apr). [online].
- This reflection discusses contingency as the condition of possibility for the emergence of Southeast Asian studies that could oppose the dominant construction of the field.
Recent Public Talks
2025 ‘The Myth of the Lazy Native’: A Southeast Asianist Text on Colonial Racial Capitalism
Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies Conference, 樱花影视, Canada, 23-25 October.
2025 Port Workers of Four Continents Unite for West Papua: Global Marxism and Anti-Systemic Struggles from Third-Worldist Indonesia
The Power of Marxist Thought, York University, Canada, 26-27 September.
2025 Asia as Method, Bandung as Praxis, World as End
Plenary Panel, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference, Walailak University, Thailand, 23-25 July.
2025 Can There Be Southeast Asians in Southeast Asian Studies? – Redux
Keynote Address, Decolonizing Southeast Asian Studies, Chiangmai University, Thailand, 17-19 July.
2025 Anticolonialism in Three Serialities: Capital, Empire, Resistance
New Histories of Capitalism in Southeast Asia, National University of Singapore, 7-8 July.
2025 Transpacific Contradictions
Transpacific Marxism: Theory, Practice, Solidarity, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 25 April.
2025 Internationalist Southeast Asias in Conjunctures
Keynote Address, Trans-Asia Graduate Student Conference, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 5 April.
2025 Global Marxism and Decolonization
Public Lecture, The Historical Materialism Study Group of the Catalan Society of Philosophy, Universitat de Barcelona, 21 March.
2025 Global Asias as Uneven Sites of Marxist Theorization
Global Asias Conference, University of California-Irvine, 22 February.
Media & Online Features
- Teresa Valenton, “,” The Eye-Opener: Toronto Metropolitan University Newspaper, November 12, 2024.
- , recorded roundtable with Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Fabio Lanza, Zifeng Liu, and Ruodi Duan, Simon Fraser University, February 20, 2024.
- , online lecture for Partihistori, Sejarah Lintas Batas, July 28, 2022.
- , online teach-in with Me Me Khant, Kevin Lin, and Geoffrey Aung, Haymarket Books and Spectre, April 22, 2021.