This roundtable discussion focuses on changes in political identity in Southeast Asia, as it interacts with new forms of leadership. Recent years have seen significant shifts in modes of political identity, with the apparent erosion of democratic values in countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, shifting character and significance of class-based identities, intensification of ethnoreligious and gender identity-based mobilization, and changing international discourse. We discuss how these processes, often filtered through new types of leaders, reshape how and when people mobilize. Our aim is breadth, to spark debate and distil common threads. Looking to individual leaders, the roundtable will address how a new type of female politician, such as the Philippines’ Sara Duterte or Malaysia’s Azalina Othman Said, projects a “butch” persona to carve out political space, defying heteronormative expectations. Scaling up to movements, it will also discuss internal dynamics within democratic struggles in Vietnam, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian states, and how pro-democracy movements become exclusionary, increasingly segmented along class, religious, and other identity lines. It will relate this theme to new types of youth leadership enabling rhizomatic-type movements, such as the recent large-scale mobilization in Indonesia. It will address, too, how and why ethno-nationalist groups, increasingly challenged in their political objectives, from Aceh to Mindanao and Myanmar, reinvent themselves in light of changing international discourses on democracy and minority rights and closing opportunities within increasingly authoritarian states to strike accommodative political agreements. Turning to state and national identity, it will assess why Vietnam’s long held anti-China political identity has recently been shifting toward more conciliatory, ethno-cultural sentiments, including youth’s now seeing China as “cool” rather than “menacing”. Finally, looking beyond the state, it will address ways that transnational activism challenges state identities, such as through the lobbying efforts of Myanmar’s diaspora groups or government in exile (NUG).