Come and Join Returned Volunteers and friends of the Peace Corps in celebration of the 49th Peace Corps anniversary. There will be 2 presentations focusing on Indonesia. Parking is $5 and available directly adjacent to the Center for Korean Studies. RSVP requested


Speakers: Maya Soetoro-Ng and Barbara Watson-Andaya
Venue: Center for Korean Studies | Map
Date: March 5th
Time: 5:30-7:30pm.
RSVP requested

Maya Soetoro-Ng and her elder brother spent several years together in Indonesia and in Hawaii before her mother decided to return to Indonesia with her.
While living in Indonesia, she was home schooled by her mother and then attended Jakarta International School from 1981 to 1984. Like her older brother, Soetoro-Ng returned to Hawaii and attended the private Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, graduating in 1988.

Maya Soetoro-Ng is an alumna of Barnard College in Manhattan, New York. She received an M.A. degree in secondary language studies and an M.A. degree in English from New York University and a Ph.D degree in international comparative education from the University of Hawaii.

Maya is an educator and has taught high-school history at La Pietra: Hawaii School for Girls in Honolulu. She has also been a lecturer at the University of Hawaii. She previously taught and developed curriculum at The Learning Project, an alternative public middle school in New York City, from 1996–2000. Maya is the maternal half-sister of President Barack Obama.

Professor Barbara Watson-Andaya
Indonesia: Priorities and the Peace Corps

Barbara Watson Andaya is Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Hawai’i and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. In 2005-06 she was President of the American Association of Asian Studies Educated at the University of Sydney (BA, Dip.Ed.), she received an East West Center grant in 1966 and obtained her MA in history at the University of Hawai’i. She subsequently went on to study for her Ph.D. at Cornell University with a specialization in Southeast Asian history.

Her career has involved teaching and researching in Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and since 1994, Hawai’i. She maintains an active teaching and research interest across all Southeast Asia, but her specific area of expertise is the western Malay-Indonesia archipelago. In 2000 she received a Guggenheim Award, which resulted in The Flaming Womb: Repositioning Women in Southeast Asian History, 1500-1800 (a Choice Academic Book of the Year in 2007).