The UP Asian Center will be hosting the online forum "Religious Networks, Mobility and Empire in Asia, c. 1850-1950" on 30 September 2026, 3:00 PM, PHT, Online via Zoom. The event is free and open to the public, but signing up for a (free) Zoom account is required.
ABOUT THE FORUM
This webinar brings together historians of religion and empire in Asia to discuss the varied and contested ways representatives of religious institutions (missionaries, catechists, etc.) and the (colonial) state as well as indigenous actors interacted. It asks how political and social spaces were created and negotiated by (foreign) religious and state actors in the context of emergent local sentiments of anti- colonialism and/or resurgent indigenous religious traditions. The webinar also discusses how religious networks and mobility facilitated not only flows of (competing) religious ideas but also reinforced long-standing religious orthodoxies and communal identities. This webinar thus seeks to contribute to discussion on the role religious actors and empire in the making of local and national religious traditions that continue to define contemporary Asian societies.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Ecclesiastical Patronage and Papal Diplomacy during the Philippine Revolution, 1898–1900
JETHRO A.E.A. CALACDAY, PH.D.
Junior Research Fellow, University of Cambridge
Jethro A. E. A. Calacday is the Schulman Research Fellow in History at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, CB2 1TJ, United Kingdom. He is a scholar of global history whose research explores the entanglement of religion and empire in the making of the modern world. He works on the histories of the US in the World, the Philippines, Papal diplomacy, global Catholicism, and Southeast Asia. He is working on his first monograph provisionally titled Catholic Empire: The American Colonial State and the Roman Catholic Church in the Transimperial Philippines.
Mission, empire and mobility: French Catholic networks across East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific during the age of Napoleon III (1852-70)
TEDDY YH SIM, Ph.D.
Associate Researcher, National Chung Cheng University
Teddy YH Sim (PhD, FRHistS) is an Associate Researcher at National Chung Cheng University and previously lectured at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. His research centres on early modern maritime and ethnic/migratory history in South and Southeast Asia. His latest book, co-authored with Dr Lorraine White, is entitled The Mascarenhas in Portugal and Its Empire, 1450–1850 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026). One of his current research thrusts is examining aspects of the history of religious orders in the East in the 19th century.
Balinese Hinduism and Dutch Colonialism
Prof. Dr. PHIL. I KETUT ARDHANA, MA
Professor, Universitas Udayana, Bali, Indonesia
Prof. Dr. Phil. I Ketut Ardhana, M.A. is a Professor of Asian History at Universitas Udayana. He currently serves as the Coordinator of the History Study Program at Universitas Udayana's Faculty of Humanities. His research interests lie in Southeast Asian history, regional border studies, and cultural anthropology.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
This symposium is organized by the UP Asian Center.
For inquiries, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 891-8500 loc. 3586.