Professor Abdul Halim Ali has been appointed Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies (Institut Pengajian Asia Timur), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Kota Samarahan, Sarawak.

Professor Abdul Halim Ali has been appointed Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies (lnstitut Pengajian Asia Timur), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Kota Samarahan, Sarawak. Professor Halim replaces Professor Madya Dr. James U.H. Chin who resigned the Directorship, 28 February, 2007, in order to take up a position as Professor and Head of the School of Business, Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak Campus, Kuching. Professor Halim continues as the Institute's Nusantara Chair, a position which he has held since 1 January 2003. Last year, Professor Halim co-edited with another former Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies, Professor Abdul Rashid Abdullah, a research volume on the socio-economic conditions in 14 coastal kampungs in western Sarawak, Masyarakat Pesisir Sarawak Barat Dco,a (2006, Program Nusantara, Institut Pengajian Asia Timur, UNIMAS).

A half-day seminar was held at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak on May :23, 2007, to discuss the results of a research project, "Status dan Keperluan Pembangunan Sosio-Ekonomi Kampung Pusa, Betong" ("Status and Socio-Economic Development Needs of Kampung Pusa, Betong"). Begun in 2005, the project is a joint study by the Institute of East Asian Studies and the Faculty of Social Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and the Fakulti Pengurusan Perniagaan UiTM, Cawangan Sarawak.

As reported in the BRB (2005, vol. 36: 242-43), Professor James Chin and Jayl Langub of the Institute of East Asian Studies, UNIMAS, organized a 2-day workshop in November 2005, which brought together a number of retired senior Sarawak administrative officers to share their experiences of administrative service during the transitional period from colonial rule to independence. Professor Chin and Jayl Langub, as co-editors, have now published, based on this workshop, a volume of these recollections, Reminiscences: Recollections of Sarawak Administrative Service Officers (2007, Kuala Lumpur: Pelanduk Publications). (reviewed in this volume).

Among the visitors to the Institute of East Asian Studies during 2007 were Robert Pringle, author of Rajahs and Rebels (1970, Macmillan), who spoke on "Rajahs and Rebels in Retrospect: A look back at Iban history in the Brooke era," and Professor Allen Maxwell, who spoke on his past field research in Brunei and on "Brunei salasilah: an underexplored genre of Southeast Asian historical texts." Universiti Malaysia Sarawak has proposed to reprint Robert Pringle's Rajahs and Rebels. However, in a note to your Editor, Pringle reports that in returning to the US, he discovered that a Malaysian publisher had already pirated the book. Through the US Embassy, a complaint was made to the Malaysian Ministry of Trade, which sent a "cease and desist" letter to the pirates, who have now recalled the book and destroyed their stocks. With this, it is hoped, a legal reprint can appear.

Hanne Christensen writes from Denmark that, in addition to raising two young children, Ronja (10) and Rasmus (6), she is currently working on a consultancy to help establish a course focusing on ethnobotany at the University of Copenhagen. She hopes to be involved in the future with a similar course at the University of Arhus. In addition, she returns to Sarawak (and Sabah) three times a year, as a guide with a large Danish travel agency, and so is able to regularly revisit Nanga Sumpa, the site of her major Iban ethnobotanical research.