About the Series

Against the backdrop of the ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on Upholding Multilateralism signed at the 2021 ASEAN Summit, this RSIS Webinar Series will take stock of regional and global international multilateral organisations in 2022 and assess how they have been affected by nearly two years of pandemic amid other grave uncertainties and geopolitical shifts. Looking at multilateralism globally across major regions of the world, experts will investigate how regions have multilaterally responded to the crisis, what new issues are emerging, and what lessons ASEAN might learn from other regions/regional organisations’ experiences and vice versa. Furthermore, regions may need to be working alongside each other for hopes of global recovery.

Conventional wisdom has it that multilateral initiatives are strongest when they build upon existing interactions to deepen and institutionalise them. To this end, this webinar series will explore both general questions on multilateral cooperation and inter-regional learning, as well as more specific ones addressing the pandemic, post-pandemic recovery, political tensions, and a priority agenda for multilateralism in 2022.

About the Panellists

Fitriani joins the Department of Politics and International Relations, CSIS in 2016. Broadly, her research focus includes defence and security in Asia Pacific, women in peace and security, non-traditional security, as well as Indonesia politics and foreign policy. She specialises in women’s participation in international peacekeeping operation.

She has held research and visiting positions at the Philosophy and Political Science Faculty, Technical University of Dortmund in Germany; the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; and Centre for Asian Studies, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. She has taught security and defence management, gender and security, and research methodology at the Indonesian Defence University, Parahyangan Catholic University, Paramadina University and Bina Nusantara University. She is part of Indonesia Security Sector Reform (SSR) Working Group with Institute of Defence, Security and Peace Studies, and together with Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces published the Almanac on Human Rights and Indonesia SSR 2009 and 2014.

She obtained her Doctor of Philosophy degree in Security and Defence Studies from Cranfield University, Shrivenham Campus, UK. She received an additional executive education at the US Department of Defense’s office of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii. She holds a BA in Social and Political Science, majoring in International Relations, from University of Indonesia and an MA in Defense Studies from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia.

Tomoo Kikuchi is an Associate Professor at Waseda University, Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University, and an Associate Editor of Journal of Asian Economics. He grew up in Germany and Japan and studied at universities in Japan, Germany and the UK. He worked at National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and Korea University and held visiting positions at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Keio University Global Research Institute. He has published papers on topics such as cross-country income convergence, international capital flows, bubbles, and production networks in journals such as Journal of Economic Theory, Theoretical Economics, and Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and edited many books and journal special issues on trade, finance and investment in Asia. He regularly writes op-eds for newspapers such as The Straits Times and The Nikkei Asian Review. He is frequently consulted by governments in the region. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Bielefeld University in Germany.

Sinderpal Singh is Senior Fellow and Coordinator of the South Asia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include the international relations of South Asia with a special focus on Indian foreign policy. Before joining RSIS, Sinderpal was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. He has published articles in India Review, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Contemporary Southeast Asia and Pacific Affairs; his single-authored book is entitled India in South Asia: Domestic Identity Politics and Foreign Policy from Nehru to the BJP (Routledge 2013; paperback version, 2015). He has also contributed book chapters on aspects of India’s Northeast, specifically in relation to India-ASEAN land connectivity. He is presently in the final stages of completing an edited book on the “Modi Doctrine” in Indian foreign policy as well as a book-length manuscript examining ‘Indian’ constructions of the Indian Ocean region from the colonial period till the present. He received his PhD from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, his MA from the Australian National University and his BA from the National University of Singapore.

Tess Newton Cain is the Project Leader for the Griffith Asia Institute’s Pacific Hub. Within that role she assists with curation for the Pacific Outlook section of the Griffith Asia Insights blog.

Tess is a dual citizen of Vanuatu and the United Kingdom. She is a former Lecturer in Law at the University of the South Pacific. She has lived and worked in the Pacific islands region for almost 25 years, with most of that time spent living in Vanuatu.

Tess’ research interests focus on politics, policy and development in the Pacific islands region. She has provided research. strategic advice and policy support to national governments, regional organisations (including the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat) and development partners (including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations, and the governments of Australia and New Zealand).

In 2019, Tess led a research team on behalf of Peacifica and the Whitlam Institute which led to the report: Pacific perspectives on the world published in February 2020. She has recently co-authored two policy briefs with Dr Wesley Morgan, published by the Griffith Asia Institute—Activating greater trade and investment between Australia and Pacific island countries and Strengthening Australia’s relationships with Pacific island countries.

Tess provides comment and analysis for media outlets in the Pacific islands region, Australia, New Zealand, and across the world.