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Daniel Pascoe, a student in the Faculty of Asian Studies Southeast Asia Centre, has won one of two Senior Scholarships offered annually to study at Lincoln College, Oxford.

Mr Pascoe will begin a Master's degree at Lincoln College in early October.

Being given the opportunity to study at Oxford, he says, is "a dream come true,"

[Pictured: ivy-covered wall, Lincoln College]

With 998 other prominent Australians, Professor Kent Anderson, Director of the Faculty of Asian Studies in the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, and Dr George Quinn, Head of the Faculty's Southeast Asia Centre, have been invited to join the Australia 2020 Summit. Professor Anderson outlines his thoughts for the ABC:

What is the key to ensuring Australia's future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing world? It is ensuring today's eight-year-old Australians will be educated for the global environment that they will encounter as twenty-year-olds in 2020. A global education involves maths and science, trades and professions, and our literature and history. But, for Australia's future security and economic prosperity we need to build a new core component: global literacy. The scientist who is not engaging with cutting-edge developments in North America; the tradesperson who does not use best environmental practice developed in Japan; the public servant who is unaware of how identical problems are solved in drought-stricken Africa - all of these will leave Australia exposed as other countries prosper.

Our commitment to fostering global literacy in young Australians needs to start early in their lives and continue in a sustained and in-depth way. It can't be cultivated with a few geography lessons and platitudes about Western Civilisation; instead, we must approach it with the same intensity we do literacy and numeracy.

An essential element of global literacy is learning a language other than English, starting from primary school, continuing through to the end of secondary and on to tertiary settings. Empathy through shared language is a clear path to building economic partnerships and avoiding security risks. Languages are not the only ingredient required to nurture global literacy. Exposure to foreign countries and cultures will inspire where textbooks bore. We should support the foreign travel of our young people - whether as backpackers, exchange students or expatriate professionals - and welcome more internationals into our communities - whether rich investors, skilled migrants, or refugees needing a safe haven.

Over the next 12 years our young people will become globally literate through committed language learning and international exposure. Global literacy will ensure our twenty-year-olds, and their families, are secure and prosperous.

The Australian National University Vice-Chancellor's 2007 Awards for Excellence in Education have just been announced.

Congratulations to Dr George Quinn, Head of the Southeast Asia Centre in the Faculty of Asian Studies, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific, who received an Award for Teaching Excellence.

Dr Quinn presented a compelling application in relation to all the selection criteria and demonstrated that he had succeeded in constructing a very interesting course for students.

Indonesia is currently experiencing a movie phenomenon not seen since the theatre-filled days of Titanic, with locally-written and produced "Ayat-Ayat Cinta" set to eclipse the box office any day now, and in under a month ...

Mr Amrih Widodo, [pictured right] of the Faculty's Southeast Asia Centre, in a discussion on ABC Radio.

[Audio]

[Steven Sengstock writes] a month has passed since the death of Alfredo Reinado in a fire-fight at the home of East Timor's President Jose Ramos Horta. There has been no backlash from his supporters and in the past week many rebel soldiers have surrendered peacefully.

Nevertheless, the power Reinado might wield over the populace in death should not be underestimated. Reinado's many admirers helped him remain at large for almost two years, and it was they who helped him to appear suddenly and unexpectedly at Ramos Horta's front door. They are the volatile, disenfranchised mass of East Timorese society who feel they can find neither voice nor representation in either the new Government of Xanana Gusmao or Mari Alkatiri's Fretilin opposition.

They are the young Timorese who, before Reinado's death, would draw you close and whisper, "Did you know Alfredo has very strong connections with the people of Manufahi? They say he's blessed with the spirit of Dom Boaventura."

Boaventura was the king, or liurai, of the Manufahi region in the rugged hills south of Dili. He died almost 100 years ago but his tenacious spirit lives on. He is the man many see as the father of East Timorese nationalism. In Timor there is an almost Arthurian sense of legend and mythology attached to his name. He is remembered as the archetypal Timorese warrior king in a country where archetypes rarely emerge from a complex cultural and ethno-linguistic puzzle.

Last year, just days before international troops launched their abortive attack on Reinado's hideout in the hills above the town of Same in Manufahi,rumours fanned out across the country that Reinado had been involved in a rare ritual ceremony. During the ceremony, presided over by Manufahi elders and described by some as a coronation, Reinado was said to have been endowed with the late Boaventura's supernatural powers.

Late in 1911, Boaventura had united many of East Timor's indigenous kingdoms in revolt against the repressive and exploitative Portuguese colonial administration. Employing guerrilla tactics akin to those used by Xanana Gusmao in the struggle against the Indonesian Army 70 years later, at one stage Boaventura came close to overrunning Dili. But the military odds were against him and ultimately he was forced back into the remote hills around Manufahi.

His resistance came to a dramatic and tragic end in August 1912. Surrounded and besieged on a mountain top, Boaventura led a courageous breakout. On horseback at the head of his warriors he plummeted towards Portuguese lines in a charge that one awestruck historian described as "a great avalanche down the side of the mountain". The warrior king escaped, but most of his estimated three thousand followers did not. They were rounded up by the colonial forces and systematically slaughtered over two nights and two days of concentrated killing.

Boaventura led a people suffering the exploitation of a colonial administration whose true authority projected little outside of Dili. Reinado, too, claimed to represent a growing population of youth and common folk disillusioned with a Government struggling to extend its judicial and administrative reach beyond the same city limits. And just as Boaventura relied on the support of influential kingdoms in central and western East Timor, Reinado and his men, too, moved freely about the same regions.

Boaventura enjoyed far less support in the east of the country, and Reinado could not venture there for fear of death. Both were known for their daring escapes and, as legend would have it, were impervious to the bullets of foreigners.

Nonetheless, Reinado's early 2007 attempt to draw parallels between his plight and that of Boaventura invited heavy criticism. Pointing to Reinado's part-Portuguese heritage, some said he was trying to appropriate a heroism and history that was not rightfully his.

Others judged it a cynical manipulation of sacred traditional beliefs and memories with the objective of winning over an ill-informed and vulnerable support base.

In fact, for many in East Timor, there will be little to lament in the passing of the fast-talking, handsome rebel leader. From the chaos of East Timor's crisis of mid-2006, the former military police major emerged as a serious embarrassment to East Timor's Government and the international forces it had invited to stabilise the country. By the time of his death Reinado had destroyed his relationships with almost all political factions,his notoriety growing with each of his anti-establishment stunts and daring escapes.

The innocent villagers who suffered from Reinado's destabilising presence in the mountainous interior will also have little to lament. Even in the western districts where Reinado was most popular, the arrogance and heavy-handedness of his men drew frequent complaints. His rebellion placed an incalculable burden on the East Timor economy, causing fear-induced delays to development projects and distracting officials from the crucial mission of rebuilding the conflict-riven nation.

Boaventura's ultimate fate has never been established. The colonial record has him facing court proceedings in the years after his rebellion but has nothing clear to say about his death. Nor did foreign bullets bring Reinado down. By all accounts his escape from last year's assault on his base in the interior city of Same was nothing short of miraculous and, in the end, it was a Timorese bodyguard and Timorese bullets that killed him.

Ultimately, only in death may Reinado find a true parallel with the warrior king. Just as the name Boaventura is revered in far more corners of the country today than he could have hoped for in his day, so the spectre has now appeared of a Reinado who, despite his failings, may live even more vividly in popular memory than he ever did in real life.

Steven Sengstock is a Masters candidate researching the history of East Timor in the Faculty of Asian Studies, ANU College of Asia & the Pacific.

[This article was first published in the Canberra Times on 17 March 2008]

Students from the Faculty of Asian Studies have excelled in recent speech contests, winning prizes in major competitions in four languages.

Nicholas Parsons won first prize in the annual Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister's International Malay Public-Speaking Competition in Kuala Lumpur in February. He competed against speakers from 30 countries including native Malay speakers but was awarded first prize for his speech 'Human Rights is Integral to Global Harmony'.

In addition to Malay, Faculty students have won prizes in Mandarin, Korean and Japanese in the past six months. "This series of awards covers almost all of our language programs," said Faculty Director Professor Kent Anderson [pictured, right]. "It makes the case very well that we are the best language institution in the country."

"Further, the students in many of the other languages the Faculty teaches are top in the country as well, particularly since ANU is the only place still committed to teaching these," Kent said.

The faculty offers Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Tetum (language of East Timor), Javanese, Cantonese, Burmese and Lao on a full major or ad hoc basis. "As the Group of Eight 2007 report 'Languages in Crisis' noted: 'In 1997 there were 66 languages offered at Australian universities. Ten years later, just 29 survive'," said Kent. "This means our commitment to this language education is not only important locally, it is important to the nation."

The additional student winners include Tatiana Scott, Alison Joan Musgrove and Hiroshi Tsuboi (Mandarin), Lauren Hodes, Jasmine Barrett, Star Conliffe, Maria Schmalz and Ai Chen (Korean) and Adrian Wong, Claire Hazlett, Elli Kim, Kareem Moustafa, and James McCombe (Japanese).

[See full report in the ANU On Campus newsletter, 12 March 2008]

Mr Liew Chin Tong, an Honours graduate of the Faculty of Asian Studies, has been elected to State Parliament in Penang Malaysia, becoming a member of the Dewan Rakyat, 12th Malaysian Parliament.

He represents Bukit Bendera for the Democratic Action Party (DAP).

[Photo: Mr Liew Chin Tong, second from right, meeting voters]

Ms Chintana Sandilands, a lecturer in Thai in the Faculty's Southeast Asia Centre, has been honoured with a 2008 ACT International Women’s Day Award.

Her citation reads:

Ms Chintana Sandilands is a key and respected member of the Thai Department of the Faculty of Asian Studies ANU, and of the Thai-Australian community in the ACT. Chintana is an Assistant Director of the National Thai Studies Centre and a lecturer of the Thai language. Chintana deservedly received the Australian National University Vice Chancellors Award for Excellence in teaching in 1997.

Chintana also provides Thai culture and language lessons to the Australian Youth Ambassador Program as well as developing an in-country ANU course on Thai/Burmese security issues.

Chintana is held in high esteem by her students, both past and present and has inspired many who she has mentored.

Dr George Quinn [pictured], Head and Senior Lecturer with the Southeast Asia Centre in the Faculty of Asian Studies, talks about: Why study a language?; The language placement test; The skills required to study a language; Lecturer's expectations; How students are assessed; How to study languages on a weekly basis; Opportunities to study languages overseas ...

This Skillsoup Feature Interview is at

https://academicskills.anu.edu.au/resource.php?action=view&id=251_

Skillsoup, from the Academic Skills and Learning Centre (ASLC), offers ANU students free and confidential help with their academic work.

The ASLC is located on the lower ground floor of the Pauline Griffin Building (building no. 11) and is open during term and vacations on an appointment basis.