Working With Asia-Pacific, Not Just Studying It

Sau Kim Lum and Martin Dusinberre, the Asia-Pacific region is often described as one of the most dynamic regions in the world. What makes it especially important for universities and researchers today?

Sau Kim Lum: Many of the world’s most significant challenges, opportunities and innovations are unfolding in the Asia-Pacific in real time. From our vantage point in Singapore, we have had a front-row seat to the region’s rapid transformation, something that cannot be fully appreciated from afar.

With Asian universities now contributing to and leading scientific research, engagement with the region provides access to diverse research environments, perspectives, data, infrastructure and talent that are essential for addressing complex global issues. Presence in the region provides nuance and contextual understanding that cannot be gained from documents or reports alone. Such engagement also requires relationships built on familiarity and trust. The Asia-Pacific is not just a region to observe, it is one to be embedded in. That distinction matters.

Martin Dusinberre: From my perspective as a historian, I can only agree. Some of the most significant theories of colonialism, statecraft, labor productivity and spatial imagination have emerged from work on the Asia-Pacific region. Because historical memory is so central to how individuals, institutions and nation-states engage with the world, these theories equally help us understand Asia and the Pacific world today. Engaging with people who experience these phenomena – and others, such as climate change – in their daily lives is crucial to the work researchers must do.

Sau Kim Lum, you mention the importance of being present in the region and building relationships. In your experience as Associate Vice President for Global Relations at NUS, what does it take to build academic connections from Singapore with partners across Asia-Pacific and beyond?

Lum: Like Switzerland, Singapore has long valued pragmatism, openness and constructive engagement with partners across regions. In my role, I have had the privilege of facilitating conversations with universities and stakeholders across the world, exploring opportunities for collaborations in research, education and talent development.

What has been particularly valuable are the long-standing partnerships built through our engagement in regional networks and global alliances like U21, where we already collaborate with UZH. These relationships have created a strong foundation of trust and mutual understanding over time, allowing us to have open conversations, navigate complexity and collaborate more effectively.

Martin Dusinberre, how can a historical perspective help us understand the region’s role in today’s global academic landscape?

Dusinberre: One thing that historians can do is to question the power dynamics by which we’ve ended up studying particular regions or problems as normative. ‘The Pacific’, for example, is a category of study that has traditionally focused on the Pacific Rim countries, thereby overlooking Pacific Island people. Similarly, area studies frameworks such as ‘South Asia’ or ‘Southeast Asia’ are historically problematic. If we can set up research projects and funding structures that better reflect, say, the long history of maritime interactions between Southeast Asia and northern Australia, or between Northeast Asia and Pacific Island people, then we can begin to redress some of the damaging historical legacies that remain in the region today.

What does that mean for researchers in practice – especially when working across languages, archives, disciplines and academic traditions?

Dusinberre: I think it requires a deep understanding of processes – in other words, how it is that we’ve come to use a particular language, or particular systems of knowledge, to understand the world today. And that, in turn, requires ongoing collaborations with scholars who share different languages or disciplinary assumptions about how the world works.

International research collaboration is taking place in an increasingly complex geopolitical environment. What can universities realistically contribute in such a setting?

Dusinberre: Universities are unique spaces of communication in that they can and should foster constructive disagreement. This intellectual freedom to disagree, to experiment and make mistakes, and to do so without the short-term pressure of a profit motive, is one great strength that universities can bring to complex international research collaborations. Government, business and civil society obviously have other important roles to play in such collaborations.

Lum: Many of today’s challenges are transnational, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, biodiversity loss and climate change. They require international research collaboration and the pooling of experts across borders. Universities need to strike a balance between openness and managing risks. One way is to adopt a risk-aware and risk-tiered approach, where fundamental research is kept as open as possible while appropriate safeguards are put in place for issues such as sensitive technologies, data security, or governance. In other words, to be as open as possible and as closed as necessary.

At the same time, universities can focus on tackling shared challenges through academic-government-industry partnerships. At NUS, we strongly believe in research complementarity. We are aware of our strengths and gaps, and we are always seeking collaborators with different strengths to develop mutually beneficial partnerships.

What can such a complementarity look like in practice?

Lum: International university partnerships matter most when they move beyond academic exchange. For example, we can see this in initiatives such as the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) in Singapore, which brings together international partner institutions, including NUS, MIT, ETH Zurich and others to work on areas such as future cities, health technologies and resilience systems. Another example is the NUS Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions, where we work with partners including NTU, Universiti Brunei Darussalam and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) to measure carbon storage in tropical peat forests across the region using advanced remote sensing technologies.

At Monday’s event in Bern, UZH officially launched its mandate as Leading House Asia Pacific. Mandated by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), UZH supports Switzerland’s bilateral research, education and innovation cooperation with eligible partners across the Asia-Pacific region. The mandate builds on the foundation established by ETH Zurich, which served as Leading House Asia from 2008 to 2025.

With UZH taking over, the geographical scope has been expanded to include Australia and New Zealand, reflecting Switzerland’s as well as UZH’s strong engagement with these countries. UZH manages funding instruments for researchers from Swiss higher education institutions and public research institutes to develop collaborations with academic and industry partners in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), Japan, South Korea and all ASEAN member states. The aim is to strengthen long-term partnerships and open up new opportunities for Swiss–Asia-Pacific collaboration.

Leading House Asia Pacific

Through the Leading House Asia Pacific mandate, UZH supports researchers across Swiss higher education and public research institutions in developing collaborations with partners in the region. What kinds of projects, exchanges or partnerships do you hope this will help strengthen?

Dusinberre: I believe this mandate gives UZH the opportunity to foster multilateral and multilingual research – and I mean multilingual not just in terms of oral or written language but also in terms of epistemologies. Part of the excitement of hosting the mandate is that we don’t know yet from which disciplines, or between which disciplines, new and urgent research questions will emerge – but we will be able to support the partnerships needed to answer them.

Lum: Here in Singapore, we recently committed SGD 37 billion [approx. CHF 23 billion] under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2030 plan, with priorities including health and human potential, advanced manufacturing and connectivity, urban sustainability and the digital economy. So these are key areas where Swiss and Asia-Pacific researchers can collaborate in meaningful ways. I hope the Leading House Asia Pacific mandate will strengthen multilateral projects, researcher exchanges and long-term partnerships that bring together complementary expertise to tackle these shared challenges.

Looking ahead, where would you like to see Swiss–Asia-Pacific academic cooperation go in terms of relationships, mutual understanding and long-term impact?

Dusinberre: Obviously it’s clear that academic cooperations facilitated by the Leading House mandate must be based on good contemporary understandings of the Asia-Pacific region – and, conversely, of Switzerland – in ways that acknowledge linguistic, historical, cultural and intellectual diversity in its many forms.

Lum: I see immense possibilities, limited only by our collective imagination. While today’s geopolitical and economic challenges are real, history consistently reminds us that such challenges can be powerful catalysts for creativity. From our point of view, nothing is deterministic. We can be active creators of our shared futures. I think it is important for us to move past transactional exchanges and build deep resilient networks and partnerships. Dialogues like this, and other spaces that bring different disciplines and perspectives together, are a good start, and we need more of such platforms.