SURGE

Tou SaiK Lee is a public speaker, hip hop artist, storyteller, and spoken word poet from St. Paul, Minnesota. Lee is a graduate student in Southeast Asian Studies at UW Madison. He founded Street Stops and Mountain Tops which connects teaching artists and organizers from the U.S. to work with Hmong students in villages and orphanages of Southeast Asia.

Kavich NEANG studied music and dance at a young age at Cambodian Living Arts before graduating in professional design from the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in 2013. In 2010, he directed his first short film, A SCALE BOY, as part of a documentary film workshop led by Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh. In 2013, he joined the Busan International Film Festival’s Asian Film Academy. He has directed three short fictions: THREE WHEELS (2015, premiere: Busan), GOODBYE Phnom Penh (2015, premiere: Asian Film Archive, Singapore), and NEW LAND BROKEN ROAD (2018, premiere: Singapore). In 2019, his first full-length documentary, LAST NIGHT I SAW YOU SMILING, won the NETPAC Award at IFF-Rotterdam, the Special Jury Prize at Jeonju-IFF, Best Image at Janela do Recife, and two awards at Tokyo FilmEx. His first narrative WHITE BUILDING had a world premiere at 78th Venice Film Festival, where it won best actor award. ​ Kavich Neang is based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Nicole Tu-Maung is a 1st year PhD student in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University and is affiliated with the Cornell Southeast Asia Program. She has experience working in environmental education and sustainability consulting in Yangon, Myanmar. She is an alumna of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former member of UW-Madison's Southeast Asia Research Group.

Faye Cura is a Filipina writer and editor who has authored four books of poetry. She is also one of the co-founders of Gantala Press, a publishing company that produces books, anthologies, and comics which center on women’s narratives.

Premrudee “Eang” Daoroung is an environmental campaigner who has been working in the Mekong region and Southeast Asia since 1992 on environmental and livelihood impacts of large-scale projects including hydropower dams, agribusiness, and extractive industries. Premrudee is the coordinator and founder of Project SEVANA South-East Asia (Project SEVANA, since 2015), and Laos Dam Investment Monitor (LDIM, since 2018). Project SEVANA and LDIM initiated and organized a major activist and local communities’ public sharing platform called “Mekong-ASEAN Environmental Week (MAEW) since 2019. Her focus is on strengthening the local community and regional networks.

MEAW Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/ASEANMAEW