Datus and Nusas Workshop 2024

The Datus and Nusas Workshop was held in Singapore, March 26–29, 2024, as part of the Summer of Protocols 2024 program. The workshop examined traditional governance and coordination protocols drawn from Southeast Asian and Maritime Southeast Asian societies — including the datu chieftainship structures of the Philippines and the Malay world, and the nusa frameworks of island Southeast Asia.

The workshop took seriously the proposition that non-Western and pre-modern protocol forms contain underexplored models of coordination, legitimacy, and institutional design. By situating these traditions alongside contemporary protocol theory, participants worked to expand the conceptual vocabulary available to protocol researchers and practitioners.