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Winner of the 2025-26 LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre Postgraduate Dissertation Prize

Tuesday 3 November 2026

SEAC is delighted to announce that the Postgraduate Dissertation Prize of this year has been awarded to Chiara Surowietz, with Kwan Yee Koo as the runner-up.

We extend our heartiest congratulations to the winner and runner-up for achieving this remarkable feat. Congratulations!

  • Chiara Surowietz

    Winner: Chiara Surowietz
    Dissertation Title: The politics of recognition at the “green” extractivist frontier: FPIC, recognition conflicts, and accumulation through destabilization in Palawan, the Philippines
    Degree Title: MSc Environment and Development

    Chiara Surowietz completed her MSc in Environment and Development at the LSE. She worked in the Dutch energy transition and studied Global Sustainability Science at Utrecht University, where she also conducted fieldwork in the Philippines. This led her to pivot into her MSc, as she felt “sustainable” transitions lacked attention to development questions. Supervised by Professor Kasia Paprocki, her dissertation examines Free, Prior and Informed Consent as a rights-based tool for Indigenous voice in land decisions, and how the politics of recognition shape its outcomes. Chiara now works as a Research Assistant in the Critical Resources Programme at the Clingendael Institute.

  • Kwan Yee Koo

    Highly Commended: Kwan Yee Koo
    Dissertation Title: From Pawns to Knights: The Rising Agency of Chinese Commodity Elites and Malayan Decolonisation,1920s-1950s
    Degree Title: MSc International Affairs (LSE-Peking University Double Degree)

    Kwan Yee Koo recently completed the LSE-Peking University Double Degree in MSc International Affairs. She is interested in the history and developments of political economies in Southeast Asia and received the 2025/26 SEAC Student Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to conduct multi-archival research across Malaysia, Singapore and the UK. Kwan Yee will be joining the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (Singapore) to study politico-economic trends and issues in Southeast Asia, as well as the region's interactions with its wider geostrategic environment.