Asia Rising

From digital regulation and political pressure to economic influence and self-censorship, media freedom in Asia is being shaped by a range of subtle and evolving constraints.

Rather than outright bans on reporting, many observers point to a process of "creeping censorship"—the gradual narrowing of space for independent journalism and public debate.

How are these pressures playing out across Asia? What do they mean for journalists and media organisations? How are the changing political, technological, and economic realities reshaping the region's information environment?

Panel:

Dr Lupita Wijaya (Research Fellow, La Trobe Centre for Global Security)

Dr Nasya Bahfen (Senior Lecturer, Journalism, La Trobe University)

Phebyn Joseph (Hindi Lecturer, Language Studies, La Trobe University)

Recorded on 30th July, 2026

Almost every email you send, every video you stream, and every financial transaction you make travels not through satellites, but through a vast network of cables lying on the ocean floor. Submarine cables are the invisible capillaries of the global internet — and increasingly, they are at the centre of great power competition in the Indo-Pacific.

Guest: Dr Samuel Bashfield (Research Fellow at the La Trobe Centre for Global Security)

COME TO OUR EVENT:

Recorded on 17th June, 2026.

The AUKUS agreement between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom is set to reshape Australia's military and strategic future through the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. But the implications of AUKUS extend far beyond defence, with significant consequences for Australia's economy, diplomacy, industry, and foreign relations.

As the project moves from ambition to implementation, important questions remain. Can Australia deliver an undertaking of this scale and complexity? What are the costs, risks, and strategic trade-offs involved? And if the project does not proceed according to plan, what alternatives are available?

The launch of the new issue of Australian Foreign Affairs.

Panel:

Recorded on 20th July, 2026.

The United States has, over recent years, significantly deepened its engagement with Pacific Island nations — reopening embassies, renewing funding compacts, and positioning itself as a committed partner in a region of growing strategic importance.

Since the return of the Trump administration in January 2025, questions have been raised about the continuity of that commitment, and what a changed US posture means for the Pacific and for the countries that share an interest in its stability.

Guest: Professor Alan Tidwell (Director of the Center for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, Georgetown University)

Recorded on 28th May, 2026.

An escalating crisis faces the Uyghur in China. The newly enacted Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress legalises forced assimilation, erases linguistic rights, and expands state surveillance. It provides a permanent legal framework for the ongoing campaign of mass re-education camps, long-term imprisonment, and cultural erasure of China's minorities.

Guest: Yalkun Uluyol (China Researcher, Human Rights Watch)

Host: Emeritus Professor James Leibold (Asian Studies, La Trobe University)

Recorded 22nd May, 2026.

Over the past decade, China has launched a remarkable number of multilateral initiatives — from the Belt and Road to BRICS to a suite of so-called Global Initiatives covering development, security, and civilisation. Western analysts have tended to read these as evidence of a Chinese project to displace the existing international order.

Guest: Dr Joel Ng (Senior Fellow and Head of the Centre for Multilateralism Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore)

Book: The Dragon’s Emerging Order: Sinocentric Multilateralism and Global Responses

Recorded on 27th March, 2026.

In an increasingly contested global environment, the international community faces growing pressure to respond to current and emerging wars and instability across the full conflict spectrum: from prevention, to managing active conflict, to post-conflict reconstruction.

Effective conflict prevention requires states to draw on a broad toolkit of policy levers, including security and defence initiatives, development assistance, and diplomatic engagement. Yet in practice, these tools are often applied unevenly.

Focusing on contemporary dynamics in Asia, the Pacific, and the Middle East, this discussion asks: What are the conflicts that Australia should be alert to? And how can diverse levers of statecraft be deployed to prevent and address conflict?

A La Trobe Centre for Global Security / Centre for Human Security and Social Change event

Panel:

Dr Lisa Denney (Director, Centre for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University)

Anna Naupa (Research and Engagement Fellow, Pacific Security College, Australian National University)

Professor Michelle Burgis-Kasthala (La Trobe Law School)

Professor Bec Strating (Director, La Trobe Centre for Global Security)

Recorded on 4th May, 2026

Over the past two decades, China and India have undergone one of the most dramatic expansions of engineering education in human history. In 2020 alone, India awarded 1.5 million science and engineering degrees, and China awarded 2 million.

In China, engineering now makes up a third of all university degrees, and this rate far outpaces the United States. China and India are producing engineers at an unprecedented scale, with significant implications for governance, social mobility, gender equity, and the labour market.

What does it mean for a society when efficiency and measurable outcomes become the dominant lens through which its most educated citizens — and its leaders — see the world? Do you need an “engineered” society to replicate China’s economic growth? And how might India’s path differ?

A webinar from La Trobe Asia and the Asian Smart Cities Research and Innovation Network (ASCRIN) at La Trobe University.

Speakers:

Dr Trissia Wijaya (McKenzie Research Fellow, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne)

Abhiram Haridas (PhD Candidate, ASCRIN and IIT (Kanpur)

Akkapeddi Rama Krishna Satya Srinivas (Graduate researcher, ASCRIN and IIT (Kanpur))

Dr Ruth Gamble (Director, La Trobe Asia)(Chair)

Recorded on 28th April, 2026.

Tibet's story is one of the most profound of the modern era — a civilisation forced into exile, carrying its language, philosophy, and sacred texts across the Himalayas in an act of collective survival. Preserving that heritage, while also engaging the modern world, has become one of the defining challenges for Tibetans in diaspora.

Few people embody that challenge more personally than Geshe Lhakdor. Born in Tibet in 1956, he fled to India as a child, went on to spend sixteen years as the personal English translator and religious assistant to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, and has since become the Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala — one of the most important repositories of Tibetan knowledge in the world.

Guest: Geshe Lhakdor

Recorded 23rd March, 2024

China's new Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress mandates Mandarin as the language of education, encourages the breakup of minority-majority neighbourhoods, and criminalises expressions of ethnic separatism — including by Chinese citizens living abroad. Critics say it formalises a decades-long push toward assimilation that has already reshaped the lives of Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian and other minority communities.

Guest: Professor James Leibold (Professor of Politics and Asian Studies, La Trobe University).

Recorded on 25th March, 2026.