The Southeast Asian Geography Association - SEAGA is a scientific and educational society, which is established in 1990 by a group of geographers to organise the inaugural SEAGA Conference in Brunei Darussalam. Its members share interests in the theory, methods, and practice of geography and geographic education. The SEAGA Conference is organised each two years.

SEAGA 2008 was hosted in Quezon City, Manila by the University of Philippines. The theme was on "Transformations and Embodiments in Southeast Asian Geographies: Changing Environments, People and Cultural Groups, Institutions and Landscapes". It was attended by more than 150 delegates from over 22 countries. 16 papers in 6 Plenary sessions, more than 90 papers in 28 panel sessions, 2 workshops and 1 roundtable discussion sessions were presented. These presentations were made by Geographers, Historians, Anthropologists, Economists, and other scholars from Social Sciences, as well as policy makers, entrepreneurs and teachers.

Moreover, participants had chance to take part in interesting field trips as the City tour in Manila, the sight seeing to Pinatubo and Taal Volcanoes, Subic Bay.

The 2007 Summer School on GIS for lecturers of Universities and Colleges of Teacher Education organized by the Center for Applied Geography finished successfully

The course was conducted in two weeks, including one day field trip. The course was focused on base ArcGIS. The key tutor of the course was M.Sc Do Van Thanh and M.Sc Dang Vu Khac, experts in this special field.

The course was hiighly aapreciated by participants as relevant, well-prepared learning material and good conditions of facilities.

Berit Aasen
Researcher, cand.sociol.
Tel.: +47 22 95 88 00
E-mail: berit.aasen@nibr.no
Research areas:
Knowledge generation and resource management; public administration and decentralisation; local politics and development; value creation and regional innovation systems
Current projects:

• Assessment of annual meeting documentation of Sekong ethnic people's development project

• Aid in conflict situations, Eritrea; Building development research capacity at the Research Centre for Applied Geography;

• Review and appraisal of AIT;

• HIV/AIDS and decentralisation;

• Knowledge base of fisheries management;

• Local politics and development;

• R&D Review, Vietnam's fisheries sector;

• Final Evaluation of the Ninh Binh project;

• Vietnam's system of government

Berit Aasen is an expert on Vietnamese studies, who has spent about 10 years continuously working on social issues of fisheries development, local politics and development in Vietnam. She, together with other members of NIBR as Sveinung Eikeland, Einar Eythórsson, Sigrid Skalnes, has developed joint research with Prof. Dr  Nguyen Viet Thinh and Assoc. Prof. Dr Do Thi Minh Duc since 1997 on fisheries development and coastal resource management in Quang Ninh, Hai Phong, Nam Dinh and Khanh Hoa. Berit Aasen has initiative to open a new NIBR-HUE project on Building Capacity for Development Research at the Research Center for Applied  Geography, Hanoi University of Education. As Project Leader, Berit Aasen attended the Grand Opening Ceremony of the Center (September 2003). With warmest feelings to Vietnam, Berit Aasen has put her efforts helping the Center to be better equipped, its staff as well as young researchers/lecturers of the Faculty of Geography to improve their research methodology and techniques.

On behalf of the Center, we wish her good health, happiness, innovation and productive research.