Over the last four years, Asia has witnessed at least five major protest movements that have reshaped regional politics in profound ways. These uprisings have not only toppled governments but have also demanded sweeping social and cultural reconfigurations. From the 2022 Aragalaya movement in Sri Lanka to the recent Gen-Z–led mobilizations in Nepal, the region has experienced a dramatic churn that compels us to rethink how we understand dissent, citizenship, and democratic participation.
This panel seeks to examine the conceptual foundations of the protests in Sri Lanka (2022), Indonesia (2023–24), Bangladesh (2024), and Nepal (2025). Our discussion will address why these movements emerged, how they unfolded, and what future trajectories they might suggest. What political, social, and economic conditions sparked mass uprisings in such divergent contexts? How did cultural assumptions and social norms shape the character of these movements? In what ways did different communities—with their varying motivations and perceptions—structure the organization, demands, and internal dynamics of these protests? Economically, should we read these uprisings as expressions of grievance, or as negotiations with the state over resources, recognition, and rights?
Despite their distinct historical and political circumstances, these protests also reveal notable commonalities. What geographic, digital, ideological, and popular convergences can we identify across these moments of dissent? And how might they help us develop a distinct understanding of twenty-first-century popular politics in Asia? By reading these Asian movements alongside broader global patterns of street-based populist mobilization, the panel widens the conversation from regional specificity to a shared global dilemma: How does popular protest transform, sustain, or constrain democracy today?
This panel is also intentional in its constitution: it brings together women scholars from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, foregrounding voices that are routinely marginalized in narratives about protests, politics, and regional scholarship. Their perspectives, which are rooted in research, activism, and lived experience, offer critical insights into how gendered spaces, exclusions, and solidarities shape protest cultures across Asia.
By raising these questions, the panel aims to move beyond event-based accounts toward a deeper theoretical and comparative understanding of contemporary Asian protests. We will explore how these movements were mobilized and sustained, focusing on protesters’ strategies, the role of digital and informal networks, and the influence of key institutions. The panel will also highlight how gender and class shaped participation, leadership, and visibility within these protests.
Importantly, this panel does not seek to exhaust the vast field of protest studies. Rather, it opens a set of generative questions that can guide future scholarship on contentious politics in democratic Asia. By engaging activists, researchers, and scholars who have closely studied these movements, we hope to foster grounded, cross-country reflections on the nature and future of dissent in the region, and to situate these reflections within larger global conversations about democracy, populism, and political transformation.
SPEAKERS:
Tarana Begum is a Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, with nearly two decades of teaching and research experience. Her academic work spans feminism in political thought, gender and politics, governance, public policy, environmental security, and peace and conflict studies. She has taught widely on gender, development, project planning, and governance, and has served as a reviewer for numerous national and international peer-reviewed journals. Tarana holds a Master of Science in International Public Administration from Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan, supported by the prestigious Joint Japan/World Bank Scholarship. She also earned her BSS (Honours) and MSS (Thesis) in Government and Politics from Jahangirnagar University. In 2015, she received the RMIT International PhD Scholarship and was a final nominee for the Commonwealth PhD Scholarship. Her current research focuses on policy responses to violence against women and the gendered dimensions of climate change adaptation, building on her earlier work on women’s empowerment through handloom programmes in Bangladesh. Her broader interests include gender and development, public policy, environmental security, feminist political discourse, peace and conflict, corruption, and women’s legal rights.
Caroline Jasintha Monteiro (Olin Monteiro) is a feminist activist, researcher, writer, consultant, and producer who has been working with the women’s movement in Indonesia since the 1990s. She has founded several women’s organizations and has actively coordinated the peace women volunteer network Peace Women Across the Globe – Indonesia since 2004. In 2011, she founded Artsforwomen, a feminist collaborative space connecting activists, artists, art workers, and cultural practitioners. She also established PBP Publishing in 2006, dedicated to women’s publications, as well as the Indonesia Women Artist Network and other feminist communities. Olin has published over 20 books and zines and has produced seven women-centered documentaries. Her work spans communication, networking, facilitation, counseling, and serving as a resource person in women’s rights, GBV advocacy, anti-VAW campaigns, sexual violence advocacy, feminist film critique, and feminist studies. She currently facilitates feminism classes and feminist networks such as Jagat Setara (an online feminist discussion platform), Woke Asia Feminist (a young Asian feminist network), and the Feminist Art Community, an online space formed during the pandemic focused on art, creativity, and feminism.
Ashmina Ranjit is Nepal’s pioneering artivist, blending conceptual art with feminist activism from the Global South. Her process-driven works, across painting, printmaking, video, performance, and installation, confront caste, gender, sexuality, stereotypes, body politics, female marginality, and human rights, helping redefine contemporary Nepali art. During Nepal’s civil war (1996–2006) and the country’s transition to a democratic republic, her bold public-space interventions in Kathmandu brought together soldiers, Maoists, politicians, and ordinary citizens in collective actions against violence, while exposing caste and gender injustices. As visiting faculty at Kathmandu University’s Center for the Arts and a key member of Just Futures Pahal, she helps shape curricula on visual narratives of social justice. Ashmina is the founder of Sutra Art Center, Gallery Nine, LASANAA, and NexUs Culture Center, platforms that foster global artistic collaboration. A two-time Fulbright Scholar and Australia Awardee with an MFA from Columbia University, she was named by The Kathmandu Post in 2018 as one of Nepal’s “25 Modern Shapers.”
Sumathy Sivamohan is a retired Professor of English from the Department of English, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Her academic and research interests lie in gender, dispossession, displacement, the fraught question of nation, Sri Lankan literatures, translation, performance, and film studies. She has taught early modern English literature, including Shakespeare, as well as critical theory, modern comparative literature, performance, and film studies. An award-winning filmmaker, performer, playwright, poet, and academic, her creative work emphasizes conversation and colloquiality while engaging in experiments with form and style. She has performed widely—in Delhi, New York, London, Melbourne, Zurich, and across Sri Lanka. She won the Gratiaen Prize for English literature in 2001 (co-winner) and was awarded the Premchand Fellowship by the Sahitya Akademi of India in 2011. She is also a committed non-violent activist for the cause of free education in Sri Lanka.
MODERATOR:
Dr. Anubha Anushree currently teaches at the Department of English, Rajdhani College, University of Delhi. She is also the Editor of the Review of Democracy. Before joining Delhi University, she was a Lecturer at the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education Program at Stanford University, where she also earned a PhD in History. Her dissertation entitled “The Moral Republic: Corruption in Colonial and Postcolonial India” examines issues of political trust and public mobilization in colonial and independent India. Most recently, Dr. Anushree’s research has been supported by the PMML, New Delhi, and Edmond Safra Center of Ethics, Harvard University and Tel Aviv University (2025-27). Her articles have appeared in Itinerario, Economic and Political Weekly, and Journal of Asian Studies. She has also contributed an essay to the volume entitled Corruption, Empire, and Colonialism in the Modern Era: A Global Perspective (2021). Her forthcoming publications include articles in American Behavioral Scientist, Disability Studies Quarterly, and Radical History Review. She has also written on the representation of disability in a volume published on Postcolonial Disabilities (Worldview, 2023). Currently, Anubha is working on a second project on the history of disability in South Asia. She has also written on the script traditions of India for popular media, The Wire and the Hindi newspaper, Prabhat Khabar.
