TOASEAN Summer School 2026

Elsa Lafaye de Micheaux is Professor of Political Economy at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco, Paris). Trained at the École Normale Supérieure (Cachan), she earned her PhD in economics in 2001 with a dissertation on education and growth in Malaysia. Her research focuses on Malaysian capitalism in historical perspective, China–Southeast Asia economic relations, labour regimes, and regional political economy. She is the author of The Development of Malaysian Capitalism: From British Rule to the Present Day (2017) and co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook on Political Norms in Southeast Asia (2024). Since 2018, she has led the ASEAN–China Norms international research network.

Manuelle Franck is Professor of Geography at the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco, Paris), where she served as President from 2013 to 2019. She is also a researcher at CESSMA (Centre for Social Sciences on African, American and Asian Worlds). A specialist in Southeast Asian urban and regional geography, particularly Indonesia, her research focuses on urbanization processes, metropolitanization, new capital cities, territorial reorganization, and regional integration dynamics. Her recent work examines infrastructure development and Chinese financial flows in Southeast Asia. She is co-author of La région Asie du Sud-Est (Armand Colin, 2024) and co-editor of Lire la ville, éclairer la métropolisation depuis l’Asie du Sud-Est (IRASEC, 2024).

Françoise Nicolas is Senior Advisor to the Center for Asian Studies at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), where she served as Director until February 2024. She also teaches at the Institut Français de Géopolitique (Paris 8). Previously, she held academic positions at the University of Paris-Est (Marne-la-Vallée) and taught at Inalco and Sciences Po. A specialist in international and Asian political economy, her research focuses on development strategies in East and Southeast Asia, foreign direct investment and growth, regional economic integration, and Asia–EU economic relations. She has published extensively on economic governance and emerging economies in the context of globalization.

Jafar Suryomenggolo is a scholar of Southeast Asian Studies who earned his PhD from Kyoto University. His research focuses on labour history, state–society relations, environmental governance, and social policy in Southeast Asia, with particular attention to Indonesia. He has held visiting positions at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Kyoto University, and Jeonbuk National University (South Korea). His publications include Fearless Speech in Indonesian Women’s Writings: Working-class Feminism from the Global South (2021) and Organising under the Revolution: Unions and the State in Java, 1945–48 (2013). He has also edited and translated several volumes on Southeast Asian political and social history.

Muriel Périsse is Assistant Professor of Economics at Université d’Artois (Faculty of Economics, Management and Social Sciences) and researcher at Lille Economics & Management (LEM, CNRS). Her teaching focuses on labour economics and industrial relations, particularly at the Master’s level. Her research examines labour market institutions in China and Southeast Asia, labour law, industrial relations, and the role of labour within regional value chains shaped by China’s economic expansion. She is co-editor (with Elsa Lafaye de Micheaux, Stéphane Le Queux and Melisa Serrano) of Labour and Value Chains. Labour Integration amid Labour Exploitation in Southeast Asia (Palgrave, forthcoming 2026). Her work has been published in leading journals in heterodox and institutional economics.

Giuseppe Bolotta is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and History of Southeast Asia at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy, and a Research Associate at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on the cultural politics of childhood, poverty, religion, and rights in Thailand and the Global South, with a recent emphasis on youth movements and democracy. He is the author of Belittled Citizens: The Cultural Politics of Childhood on Bangkok’s Margins (NIAS Press, 2021) and co-editor of Political Theologies and Development in Asia (Manchester University Press, 2020).

Silvia Vignato is full professor in anthropology at the Università di Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB). Beside a monograph about Sumatran Hinduism (Au nom de l’hindouisme, L’Harmattan, 2001), and numerous articles on the subject, she has published about Malaysian factory workers and about post-conflict and post-disaster young Acehenese people (children, teenagers, young parents). She has recently edited Dreams of Prosperity: Inequality and Integration in Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2018, and Searching for Work: Small-scale Mobility and Unskilled Labor in Southeast Asia Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2019, and a monograph in Italian Figlie delle catastrofi: un’etnografia della crescita nella ricostruzione di Aceh, and directed two films: Rezeki. Gold and stone mining in Aceh (2016) and Aceh, After (2020). Vignato, S., Arnez, M. (2022). Worlding Sites and Their Ambiguity: An Introduction. European Journal of East Asian Studies, 21(2), 129-141.

Pietro Paolo Masina is Professor of East Asian History at the University of Naples “L’Orientale,” where he also directs the Master’s programme in Global Management for China. He is Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of East Asian Studies and Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the political economy of development in East and Southeast Asia, with particular attention to industrialization, labour regimes, state transformation, and regional integration. He has coordinated and led numerous European Commission–funded research projects and has published extensively on Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

Xue Gong is an Assistant Professor and Coordinator in China Programme of S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research focuses on China’s economic statecraft, China-Southeast Asia relations. She also studies state-business relations and regionalism and governance. Dr. Gong has contributed to peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Contemporary China, World Development, Political Science Quarterly, European Journal of International Security, International Affairs, the Pacific Review, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Contemporary Southeast Asia. She has two co-edited books on China’s Belt and Road Initiative. She also serves as a non-resident scholar at Carnegie China.

Marzia Mongiorgi is a senior development finance leader with over 28 years of international experience in multilateral institutions, including the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations. Her expertise spans development finance, investments design and implementation, rural transformation, and climate integration. At ADB, she held executive roles across Asia, leading sovereign operations, managing complex multi-billion-dollar portfolios, and conducting high-level government negotiations. She has shaped country partnership strategies and corporate portfolio reforms, contributing to institutional performance and development impact. She holds an MSc in Development Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a Laurea in Economic and Social Sciences from Bocconi University.