The project's implementation comprised a kick-off meeting, three research workshops and a final conference, six e-newsletters, the collaborative production of web-documentaries and a website, functioning both as a platform of communication and dissemination.
Research findings centered on five ‘arenas of competition’:
Environment – Research focused on the contested knowledge of transnational river systems and the seas when modernizing projects clash with indigenous practices and value-systems or when institutional arrangements meant to secure the commons fail to deliver on their commitments and obligations.
Economy – Multiscale research looking at the development policies and transformations in SEA explored the political economy of equitable growth with special foci on labor issues, uneven development and state-state business relations.
State – Populism and authoritarian forces contest liberal traditions and values in SEA and provoke change. Locally and nationally, the region’s statecraft is redefined, re-interpreted or re-negotiated at various levels as the social and political power-balance is shifting.
Identity – Alternative identities have been and are still being shaped in a process of generational change, under the impact of violence or in transnational contexts.
Region – Research on the region presents ASEAN as an organization shielding its member-states and claiming centrality in SEA affairs through its construction of dialogue networks. As a corollary, the performance of external partners and powerholders to penetrate, interact and influence ASEAN is examined.
On top of its research agenda, CRISEA has delivered timely pieces relating to the impact of the pandemic in SEA and responses of several ASEAN member states.
Dissemination activities were structured events, result-driven and organized in a time and cost efficient way. In their implementation, they were reactive, providing well-timed inputs and flexible in the elaboration of both content and format. CRISEA had four types of impacts:
• The successful organization of dissemination workshops for the EEAS in Brussels and EU Delegations in SEA capitals in the form of briefings derived from a dialogue between researchers and diplomats coordinated by the project’s management team.
• The production of policy briefs including recommendations, introducing academic work to decision-makers and the public. Policy briefs were attentive to changing contexts such as the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the coup d’état in Myanmar in 2021.
• The multiplicator effect in outreach of the CRISEA web documentaries produced by collaborative work and discussions at workshops. They present case studies bearing out the project’s core questions about conflicting integrations in a zooming macro-micro perspective.
• The publication of project deliverables in the form of working papers, policy briefs, interviews, articles and academic publications in special journal issues and book chapters.
The project will be effective in the long run by its web-documentaries, its web archive of publications as well as the continuity of scholarly links and cooperation deriving from its network.
