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?

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.

China’s rise is often framed as a challenge to the Western-led international order, with attention focused on how Beijing works within — and pushes back against — liberal institutions. Yet a more consequential shift is underway. China is increasingly shaping global politics through new, Sino-centric forms of multilateralism, building parallel forums that operate alongside, and sometimes beyond, existing institutions.

What is driving this strategy, and how do these new arrangements function in practice? How is China combining hard and soft power to expand its influence? And what does the spread of Sino-centric multilateralism mean for the future of global order?

The Melbourne launch of The Dragon’s Emerging Order: Sino-centric Multilateralism and Global Responses, with editor Joel Ng.

Panel:

Dr Joel Ng (Head of the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS)

Dr Alan Chong (Senior Fellow, Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS)

Dr Su-Hyun Lee (Senior Associate Fellow, Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS)

Professor Nick Bisley (Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research), La Trobe University)

Dr Mark Manantan (Research Fellow, La Trobe Centre for Global Security)(chair)

Recorded on 27th March, 2026.

Across the Asia-Pacific, people are living longer than ever before. From rapidly ageing societies in Northeast Asia to younger but fast-transitioning populations in South and Southeast Asia, countries across the region are confronting the social and economic implications of longer lives.

These shifts are generating diverse challenges — and innovative responses — as governments, communities and families rethink how to support ageing populations.

What does it mean to age well in societies undergoing rapid economic and social change? How can families, communities and health systems across Asia better support people to remain healthy and independent for longer? And what innovations — social, medical or technological — are emerging in the region to help societies adapt to this new demographic reality?

Panel:

Professor George Liu (Associate Dean (Partnerships International), School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University)

Professor Irene Blackberry (John Richards Chair and Director, Care Economy Research Institute, La Trobe University) -

Dr Hiromasa Okayasu (Director of Division of Healthy Environments and Populations. World Health Organization) -

Professor Bianca Brijnath (Health Communication in Society at La Trobe University) (Chair)

Recorded on 23rd March, 2026.

Traditional security debates focus on maps, borders, naval deployments, and treaties. But increasingly, territory in Asia is also constructed through narratives, media coverage, digital platforms, and public emotion.

Journalists are not just observers — they help shape how territory, sovereignty, and security are understood by the public and policymakers.

Guest: Dr Lupita Wijaya (Research Fellow at the La Trobe Centre for Global Security and Co-ordinator of the Southeast Asia Maritime Media Visits Project).

Recorded 16th March, 2026.