The Yale-NUS Lecture on Global Affairs is sponsored by the late Professor Saw Swee Hock.
The contemporary struggle in Asia is as much about competing strategic ‘imaginaries’ as it is about military or economic power. Professor Evelyn Goh argues that geopolitics rests on imagining and prioritising a particular set of spatial connectivity: which parts of the world ought to be more significantly connected to each other than with other parts? Thus, geopolitical competition is essentially a contest over which imagined connected community is most important. The lecture analyses how key states in the region are renewing geopolitical competition through the three main competing strategic imaginaries of Asia today: the ‘Asia-Pacific’; a revived ‘Greater Asia’ made possible by China’s resurgence; and the ‘Indo-Pacific’ visions.
About the speaker
Professor Evelyn Goh is the Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at The Australian National University, where she is the Director of Research at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre. Her research focuses on Asian security, and International Relations theory and practice. Her books include The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia (Oxford, 2013); and Re-thinking Sino-Japanese Alienation: History Problems and Historical Opportunities (Oxford, 2020, with Barry Buzan). Her current projects study the interactions between Chinese investment and influence, and domestic politics in Southeast Asia.
About the moderator
Professor Naoko Shimazu joined Yale-NUS College in 2016 after 20 years of teaching at the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck University of London. She obtained her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Political Studies at the University of Manitoba, followed by Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in International Relations at the University of Oxford. She has a joint professorial appointment with the Asia Research Institute, and an honorary professorship at the Department of History, National University of Singapore.
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