The TRACE team, Wengki Ariando recently led two initiatives at the 14th EuroSEAS Conference in Madrid, Spain, highlighting the project’s commitment to scholar activism and grassroots climate governance in Southeast Asia.

Documentary Premiere: Mambang Kuneng 

Wengki Ariando and Di Fang premiered their new documentary, “Mambang Kuneng: Listening to the Sea with Orang Laut.” The film is a collaborative scholar-activism project created alongside artists, filmmakers, journalists, local researchers, and the Orang Laut communities of Indonesia's Riau Islands Province.

The premiere was followed by a talk show titled “Listening, Knowledge, and the Sea: Indigenous Epistemologies and Artistic Fieldwork.” This session addressed critical issues surrounding marine resource governance, coastal marine grabbing, and the impacts of destructive contemporary development on Orang Laut sea nomads.

More on the Mambang Kuneng screening

Roundtable: Scholar Activism in Southeast Asia 

In a parallel session, Wengki Ariando and Saur (Butet) Manurung from Sokola Institute and a PhD Researcher from University of Amsterdam, organized a roundtable discussion titled “Too little, too late? The reckoning of scholar activism in Southeast Asia,”featuring TRACE Principal Investigator Diana Suhardiman as the discussant.

The panel brought together scholar-activists from across the region. Using short presentations and visual footage, they shared on-the-ground work regarding Indigenous Peoples' education, solid waste management, sea nomad advocacy, and filmmaking as a social movement.

More on the Scholar Activism roundtable

^{The participants of Roundtable: Too little, too late? The reckoning of scholar activism in Southeast Asia}

Together, these two initiatives reflect the core impact stories of the TRACE project, helping to forge crucial connections between multiscalar actors to advance grassroots climate governance across Southeast Asia.