Asia Prosperity Research Hub Launch

The Asia Prosperity Research Hub (APRH) explores what prosperity means and entails in Asia. Thinking about global prosperity in the 21st century requires a critical engagement with the evolution of this concept and the relevant sustainable pathways to prosperity in Asia.

The  hub aims at understanding the economic and social value systems, taking into consideration country-specific historical conjunctures and cultural features. At the same time, it intends to shed light on the evolution of developmental paradigms in the region and evaluate individual Asian countries’ systemic changes over time.

Learn more about the Asia Prosperity Research Hub

About the Event

What does prosperity mean, and what does it entail in Asia?

In line with Institute for Global Prosperity's acknowledgement that ‘prosperity is relational and interconnected,’ the Research Hub aims at understanding the economic and social value systems, taking into consideration country-specific historical conjunctures and cultural features. At the same time, it intends to shed light on the evolution of developmental paradigms in the region and evaluate individual Asian countries’ systemic changes over time.

Programme

09:30 – 10:00 (In-person) Arrival, registration, and coffee

10:00– 10:10 (Hybrid) Welcome to the IGP and to the Asia Prosperity Research Hub’s Launch by Prof Henrietta Moore (Director, UCL Institute for Global Prosperity)

10:10 – 10:30 (Hybrid) APRH Introduction by members: Prof Maurizio Marinelli, Dr Yuan He, Dr Onya Idoko and Dr Sertaç Sehlikoglu

10:30– 11:00 (Hybrid) Keynote 1: Professor May Tan-Mullins, Dean International & Chief Sustainability Officer, James Cook University

11:00 – 11:30 (Hybrid) Keynote 2: Prof Magnus Marsden, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Sussex

11:30 – 12:00 (Hybrid) Keynote 3: Prof Erkko Autio, FBA , Professor Chair in Technology Venturing and Entrepreneurship, Imperial College London

12:00– 12:15 End of session 1: Q&A

12:15 – 13:00 (In-person) Lunch Break

13:00 – 14:00 (Hybrid) Soundbite panel discussion: Responsibly fostering prosperity in Asia through entrepreneurship and technology (led by Dr Onya Idoko)

List of panellists

• Prof Erkko Autio - Imperial College Business School
• Ms Yuki Yuan - Imperial College Business School
• Dr Donghyun Park - Asian Development Bank
• Mrs Sonia Kabir - SBK Tech Ventures & United Nations Technology Bank
• Dr Simon Schillebeeckx - Singapore Management University

14:00 – 14:15 (In-person) Tea Break

14:15 – 15:45 (In-person) Immersive Workshop – Geographies of Imaginaries: Prosperity and Nativity Across Asia (led by Dr Sertaç Sehlikoglu)

About the Keynote Speakers

Professor May Tan-Mullins

Professor May Tan-Mullins' research interests are political ecology of rising China, environmental and energy justice, poverty alleviation and building resilience for the poorest and most vulnerable in the Tropics. Based on her expertise in various international development and human security issues, she was a consultant for the UNDP, National Bureau of Asian Research (US), Revenue Watch Institute (US) and the Chinese government. Professor May Tan-Mullins was also awarded the prestigious global Rockefeller Bellagio writing residency in Bellagio Centre, Lake Como in Italy.

Some of her most current research projects is with the University of Nottingham UK and University of Philippines on ‘Poverty Alleviation in Post Typhoon Yolanda’ awarded by ESRC-DFID (2015-2018) and another project by the Research Council of Norway on the topic of ‘Roads to Power? The Political Effects of Infrastructure Projects in Asia (2021-2024).

Learn more about Professor Tan-Mullins

Professor Magnus Marsden

Professor Marsden is a specialist in Muslim Asia. He has broad interests in anthropological and historical debates about religion, globalisation and identity. His career began as an anthropologist of Pakistan and Islam. Working in a volatile region intersected by the borders of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and China drew him to study mobile merchants in light of interdisciplinary debates about frontiers, boundaries, and regions. Tracing Afghan trading networks that connect South and Central Asia to the former Soviet Union, he challenged scholarship that depicted Afghanistan as peripheral, and theorised changing forms of global connectivity through a consideration of frontier spaces.

An ERC Advanced Grant allowed him to expand his interests in new directions. He embarked on an interdisciplinary study of multiple ‘inter-Asian’ trading networks – including those comprising Afghans - that connect China to Asia and Europe. This resulted in historically sensitive ethnographic material addressing how Muslim traders navigate multiple project of Eurasian connectivity and a monograph that contributes to the anthropology of geopolitics through the twin lenses of trading networks and mistrust.

Learn more about Professor Marsden

Professor Erkko Autio FBA

Professor Autio is Chair in Technology Venturing and Entrepreneurship at Imperial College London Business School. At the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group, he directed the Diffusion of Innovation theme and was a Co-Investigator in the Digital City Exchange project. He also served at the Senate of Imperial College and in the Research Committee of ICBS. He was a founder of the Energy Business Laboratory of ICBS and directed ICBS Doctoral Programme for 7 years until 2015.

Currently Professor Autio is working on two new and exciting initiatives. One is the EntResilience project, which explores entrepreneurial resilience in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. The other one is the Wicked Acceleration Lab, a joint initiative between the Imperial College Business School and Royal College of Arts that develops methods for Wicked Acceleration, Deep Tech Acceleration and Moonshot Acceleration.

Learn more about Professor Autio