Ten years of API Fellows’ work and research have produced a remarkable level of cross-national learning at public, grassroots and community levels. For a variety of sectors, there has been a growing archive of instructive knowledge and collective experience, and a moving record of learning, exchanging and participating in settings away from home, far from what was familiar, together with people whom one wanted to know.

Still, it is improbable for us to feel that we belong to a community if we lack reliable and shared ideas about our ‘other community members’.  Hence, the Symposium begins with a reflection on issues of identity and regional history.

Moreover, it is hardly valuable to belong to a community if one is not entitled to an equitable share of its commonwealth in principle and practice. Hence, the Symposium continues with discussions of visions of social justice and ways to attain it.

Finally, it is by now scarcely viable for local communities, especially those that deserve the support of public intellectuals, to be isolated from other communities. Hence, the Symposium devotes a third session to a contemplation of the reach and impact of globalization.

For the Symposium three eminent Keynote Speakers have been invited to share their views of the themes that move API and inspire the work of its Fellows.

The Symposium sessions, open to API Fellows, API Community Members, and invited guests, are as follows:

Session 1: Changing identities and their social, historical and cultural contexts

The Keynote Speech will be delivered by Dr. Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Professor Emeritus of International Affairs, Cornell University, author of Imagined Communities, The Spectre of Comparisons and Under Three Flags, among other acclaimed books, and renowned for his majestic studies of Southeast Asia and profound commentaries on historical and social developments.

Session 2: Reflections on the human condition and the search for social justice

The Keynote Speech will be delivered by Dr. Krisana Kraisintu, 2009 Ramon Magsaysay Award recipient and International Honorary Dean, Faculty of Oriental Medicines, Rangsit University, Thailand.

Session 3: Globalization: Structures, processes and alternatives

The Keynote Speech will be delivered by Dr. Jomo K. S., Assistant Secretary-General, United Nations, an internationally respected economist and API Fellow whose work as academic, researcher and public intellectual has enriched our understanding of the different dimensions of Asia’s changing position under conditions of rapid globalization.