Moch Faisal Karim is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at BINUS University, Indonesia. His primary research interest lies in the intersection of political economy and International Relations (IR) with an emphasis on the role of state institutions and state-society relations in explaining transnational issues faced by Southeast Asian countries. His research has been published, among others, in Territory, Politics, and Governance, International Relations, Foreign Policy Analysis, Asian Studies Review, Pacific Review, and Contemporary Politics.

The transformation of forest governance in low- and middle-income countries has been accelerated due to increased international pressure for climate change adaptation. These endeavours, however, have been severely limited by inefficiencies within the forest-related state institutions tasked with addressing governance challenges, such as coordination, mediating political interests, and strategy-setting. His paper aims to contribute to the discussion of forest governance by providing an alternative view of such limitations. Using the case of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) program in Indonesia, his paper examines the institutionalization process of the climate agenda in the forestry sector and how it influences forest governance transformation.

Date: 17/11/2022
Time: 16:15-17:30
Venue: FAB4.73, Faculty of Arts Building

Yee Kuang HENG is Professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy, The University of Tokyo. Yee Kuang is on sabbatical at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risks as a Senior Academic Visitor. His recent publications include “UK-Japan military exercises and mutual strategic reassurance”, Defence Studies, Vol. 21 Issue 3 (2021); “Japan’s significance for the United Kingdom’s shaping ambitions in the Indo-Pacific”, East Asian Policy (forthcoming 2022), “Enhancing Europe’s Global Power in Asia 2030”, Global Policy, Vol. 11 Issue 1 (2020); “Shaping the Indo-Pacific? Japan and Europeanisation”, LSE IDEAS Strategic Update (2021); “Military Evolution and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces” in Nicole Jenne and Alan Chong (eds) Asian Military Evolutions (Bristol University Press, forthcoming 2023).

Although the constitutional status of its Self-Defence Forces (SDF) remains a subject of intense political debate, Japan’s participation in military exercises has in fact grown quite rapidly over the years. Drawing from interviews with SDF officers and civilian policymakers, his paper explores what strategic cost-benefit calculations help explain Japan’s choice of specific partners or exercise formats (bilateral/multilateral) in the region. Were exercises valued or developed according to some political, strategic, capacity-building, military/operational, or other benchmark? To what extent do those exercises help Japan maintain or achieve its desired vision of regional order?

Time: 16:15-17:30
Date: 11/11/2022
Venue: S0.13, Social Sciences Building

Saori N. Katada is Professor of International Relations at University of Southern California, and she is currently a Banque de France/Fondation France-Japon Fellow at L’École de Haute Etudes en Sciences Sociales (FFJ/EHESS) in Paris France. Her book Japan’s New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific was published from Columbia University Press in 2020, and its Japanese version in 2022. She has co-authored two recent books: The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Taming Japan’s Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy (Cornell University Press, 2018). She was the vice president of International Studies Association (ISA) from 2021 to 2022. She has her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Political Science), and her B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo). Before joining USC, she served as a researcher at the World Bank in Washington D.C., and as International Program officer at the UNDP in Mexico City.

This project examines the infrastructure investment ‘competition’ between Japan and China in the context of privatization of development finance in the post-global financial crisis world. As geoeconomic challenge to China’s infrastructure ‘big push’ through its Belt-and-Road Imitative, Japan and the Quad powers responded by establishing Blue Dot Network to certify bankable infrastructure projects with the hope that such certification will invite institutional investors to infrastructure financing in the Indo-Pacific region. By examining contrasting financing features and risk consideration of infrastructure financing between China and Japan, the project illustrates the foundation of quantity versus quality competition among the financial suppliers of infrastructure investment.

Date: Friday, 4th November

Time: 17:15-18:30

Venue: S0.13, Social Sciences

For additional information, please contact the EASG at easg@warwick.ac.uk

Dr Patrick Meehan works in Global Sustainable Development in the School of Cross-Faculty Studies at the University of Warwick, and he is also a post-doctorate research fellow in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. In this seminar, Dr Meehan provides insights into the political economy of the illegal drug trade in Myanmar based on extensive fieldwork conducted as Co-Investigator of a five-year research programme (2017-2022) led by SOAS University of London entitled 'Drugs and (dis)order: Building sustainable peacetime economies in the aftermath of war’. This seminar explores how Myanmar’s flourishing drug economy is not only rooted in the country’s longstanding armed conflict, but is also central to processes of rapid political, economic, and social change that have re-shaped Myanmar’s borderlands since the 1990s. Through exploring issues of cultivation, trafficking, and rising local drug use, Dr Meehan reveals how drugs have become embedded in the DNA of the Myanmar state and the development processes through which Myanmar’s resource-rich borderlands have been integrated into the global economy. 

Date: 27th October 2022 

Time: 16:15-17:30 

Venue: MS.05, Zeeman Building 

This seminar is part of the East Asia Study Group (EASG) Seminar Series. For further information please contact the EASG at easg@warwick.ac.uk.

Dr. Titipol Phakdeewanich is based at the Faculty of Political Science at Ubon Ratchathani University in Thailand. Previously, he has been a Visiting Research Fellow on Human Rights at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Lund University, Sweden. His research is focused on finding actual solutions to problems experienced by the under-represented, marginalised, and disenfranchised groups within Thailand.

In this seminar, he discusses Thailand’s youth-led democracy movement, that escalated after the dissolution of the Future Forward Party in 2020. Despite government suppression, it continues to challenge aspects of the Thai cultural paradigm, specifically its embedded hierarchical structures, which they argue to be one of the main obstacles for an inclusive, equality-driven, participatory democracy. They claim that people’s fundamental human rights are not fully protected in Thailand.

To what extent has the youth-led democracy movement influenced the military-led government to promote inclusive, equality-driven, participatory democracy? How can the youth-led democracy movement effectively challenge embedded hierarchical structures in Thai society in order to promote inclusive, equality-driven, participatory democracy? Is there an increasing tension between generations when it comes to the question of cultural heritage being perceived to be a reimposition of cultural norms? What is the implication of Youth-led democracy movement on the scheduled 2023 Thailand General Election?

Date: Monday, 17th October 2022

Time: 16:15-17:30

Venue: A0.23, Social Sciences Building