Proposed Network: Research, activities, government and national benefits

Research and activities

The action arising from the findings of this report envisages creation of a 'network of networks' to transform the strengths of the old area studies, entangle those remodelled strengths with each other and with constituencies of professionals and practitioners and thereby focus research on problems confronting Australians in an inescapably globalizing world.

The Network will undertake activities to foster a new breed of scholar, steeped in the best characteristics of areas studies (e.g., language, historical knowledge, on-the-ground experience, cultural sensitivity) but equipped to cross-disciplinary, geographic and professional boundaries.

The Network will seek out and interact regularly with professionals and practitioners (from accountants to medical doctors to engineers to police) who work in the Asia-Pacific region. The format of such interactions will vary according to the groups involved, but the goals will be to bring context and keener understanding to the professionals and a sense of contemporary needs, problems and work experience to the scholars. These exchanges are expected to influence and shape future research.

The Network will also undertake

1. research training to equip scholars with perspectives and skills to work more effectively and productively in the interacting, globalized world; and
2. seminars and workshops to ensure scholars are constantly involved with the major issues of Australia’s Asia-Pacific neighbourhood and the people thinking most provocatively about those issues.
3. placements of practitioners/professionals in academic research environments and academic researchers in professional/practitioner environments.

The Network envisages the following broad areas of activity.

• creation of a 'sphere' or 'space' where professionals (e.g., health, law, international relations, accountancy, etc) and scholars of Asia work together through
  • cross-placements in industry, government and universities
  • seminars and working groups focussing on themes in pure and applied research
• research training enhanced and remodelled through
  • national 'master classes' and workshops
  • development of national postgraduate research awards, perhaps modelled on the Diploma in Education (Asia) developed by the Asia Education Foundation and on European Union examples of cross-Europe MA awards
  • fellowships for extended in-country language and research for postgraduates relevant to particular professions or problems
• inter-disciplinary/inter-regional meetings of scholars, involving key overseas authorities, to focus research on critical issues.

At this point, it is premature to specify precise research areas that the Network would address in its initial 18 months, but questions of health, law and water and water-use are obvious areas that emerge from the surveys done for this report. Australia already has notable expertise in these areas. The task lies in making the varied elements (human and institutional) of that expertise better known to each other and better linked to the region and world generally.

Government

To make a Network succeed, it must have a politically acceptable and administratively efficient structure that grows out of, and supports, its goals and activities.

The model set out below has been workshopped with scholars and senior administrators from around Australia and has many of the features necessary to overcome the following challenges that any network must face. A successful Network must

1. have a program imbued with energy and imagination - that does not wither on the vine or lapse into 'more of the same-ness'
2. reward institutions that have put in time and money to this particular initiative and to 'study of Asia' more generally over the years
3. head off feelings that the Network is a closed shop dominated by one or two people or institutions
4. use current groupings (e.g., China people, South Asianists, scholars of Islam, Pacificists, etc) to propel people into wider circles of ideas and questions - i.e., use current, de facto, often regional 'networks' to entwine their members in larger webs
5. ensure cross-border, cross-disciplinary, cross-professions research and training related to major themes
6. use funds and people efficiently - to avoid spending excessively on administration

The Node Model explained below and shown in the diagram uses existing centres of energy - in effect, living networks, whose liveliness is evidenced by their participation in this proposal and in a host of other activities - to mobilize their adherents and enmesh them in wider webs. Those wider webs include webs of different region-based and discipline-based scholars in Australia, webs of outstanding scholars overseas and webs of activists and professionals who work with colleagues in the region but are not scholars of the Asia-Pacific.

Based on experience of the past 20 years, the Node Model attempts to anticipate pitfalls. It aims to make the structure genuinely national and to recognize activity and merit in non-metropolitan areas and institutions. It provides a structure in which the interface between a 'professional Australia,' working with professional partners in Asia and encountering problems that cry out for explanation, can take place. From that interface, research projects may be expected to crystallize - to the benefit of both scholars and professionals.

The Node Model also allows the seminar, conference and workshop activities, which form the core of any mechanism designed to grapple with ideas, to be based at venues around the country. Indeed, the method of encouraging nodal 'energy-groups' to seek support and bid for projects is intended to ensure diverse location and participation.

A NODE MODEL