On the afternoon of May 7, 2025, the Institute for International and Are Studies (IIAS) of Tsinghua University invited Professor Philip Taylor, an emeritus professor at the Australian National University, and former head of the Department of Anthropology at the School of Asia-Pacific Studies, to give the eighth lecture in the series of lectures entitled "Southeast Asian Studies: The Intellectual Foundations of an Area Studies Discipline", with the theme of "Post-national, Postcolonial, Postmodern". This lecture was hosted by Guan Hao, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of International and Regional Studies of Tsinghua University. Dozens of researchers from domestic and foreign universities and audience interested in this topic attended the lecture offline and online.

At the beginning of the lecture, Professor Taylor used field photos of the multi-ethnic areas on the southern border of Thailand to point out that in the context of globalization and the decline of national authority, the nation-state is no longer the only research unit, but a regional reality of multiple subjects and intertwined sovereignty has emerged. Later, in explaining the postmodernism part, Professor Taylor emphasized the constructive nature of knowledge, ideas and history, and cited a large number of scholars' research, pointing out that national identity often depends on maps, printing technology and discourse production. Through the analysis of post-war Southeast Asian literature, he pointed out that these texts write war memories from an individual perspective, presenting the nonlinear and multi-faceted characteristics of history and the emotional rifts of individuals, providing an important cultural critical path for understanding the historical construction and subject identity in Southeast Asian society. In the discussion of postcolonialism, Professor Taylor used Java and Angkor as examples to analyze how colonial power shaped national identity and continued to cultural nationalism today. He emphasized that the religious, linguistic and cultural standards constructed in the colonial era still have a profound impact on contemporary Southeast Asian society.

Finally, in the discussion session, Professor Taylor and the audience on site had a heated discussion on whether local traditions can be separated from colonial construction and how national boundaries are constantly reshaped by transnational networks.

Philip Taylor, PhD in Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University, and former Head of the Department of Anthropology at the Asia Pacific Institute. He has lived and worked in Vietnam and Cambodia for over a decade, and has a command of Vietnamese, Cambodian and French. His research interests include contemporary anthropology of Vietnam, Mekong sub-regional studies, Southeast and East Asian studies, development and urbanization, and modernity. Representative works include monographs The Khmer Lands of Vietnam: Environment, Cosmology and Sovereignty (2014, Winner of the EuroSEAS-Nikkei Asian Review Social Science Book Award), Goddess on the Rise: Pilgrimage and Popular Religion in Vietnam（2004）, Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in Vietnam's South（2001）et al. Professor Taylor has supervised more than 30 PhD theses during his tenure at the Australian National University and has been awarded the ANU ‘top supervisor’ award. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Editor-in-Chief of the Vietnam Series of the Australian National University Press, and as a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies, the Review of Asian Studies, and the Cambridge History of the Vietnam War (Volume 3).