T H U R S D A Y, 5 D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 9
9:30 – 9:45 R E G I S T R A T I O N
9:45 – 10:00 WELCOME & OPENING REMARKS
TIM BUNNELL | National University of Singapore
MUHAMMAD ALAGIL | Jarir Investment
ENGSENG HO | National University of Singapore, and Duke University
10:00 – 10:30 INTRODUCTIONS | TOWARDS AN ASIA-CENTERED MARITIME MIDDLE EAST
NISHA MATHEW | National University of Singapore
10:30 – 12:00 PANEL 1 | THE SOUTHERN TIER: THE UAE’S GAME PLAN
CHAIRPERSON ABDULLAH BABOOD | National University of Singapore
10:30 Global Logistics and the Rise of Dubai—and Singapore
ENGSENG HO | National University of Singapore, and Duke University
10:50 The Horn of Africa: A View from Abu Dhabi’s Berth in the Maritime Corridor
NISHA MATHEW | National University of Singapore
11:10 The UAE: An Emerging Middle Power in the Indian Ocean?
JEAN-LOUP SAMAAN | UAE National Defense College
11:30 Question & Answer
12:00 – 13:00 LUNCH
13:00 – 14:30 PANEL 2 | THE NORTHERN TIER
CHAIRPERSON NAOKO SHIMAZU | Yale-NUS College, and National University of Singapore
13:00 Old Neighbors of the New Transcontinental: The Idea of the Northern Tier
SERKAN YOLAÇAN | National University of Singapore
13:20 Russia-Gulf Interactions in the Indo-Pacific Region
LI-CHEN SIM | Zayed University
13:40 Northern Tier, Southern Tier and the Balancing Role of the Central Arab Lands
CEMIL AYDIN | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
14:00 Question & Answer
14:30 – 15:30 PANEL 3 | ARABIA: A RING OF CRISES
CHAIRPERSON WU BINGBING | Peking University
14:30 Is the GCC still a Viable Project? The Gulf Crisis and the Position of Kuwait and Oman
ABDULLAH BABOOD | National University of Singapore
14:50 War in Yemen: Regional Dimensions
SAADALDEEN ALI TALIB | Former Minister of Industry and Trade, Yemen
15:10 Question & Answer
15:30 – 16:00 AFTERNOON TEA
16:00 – 16:30 US WITHDRAWAL, FILLING THE VACUUM
CHAIRPERSON JEAN-LOUP SAMAAN | UAE National Defense College
via SKYPE BERNARD HAYKEL | Princeton University
16:30 – 18:30 ROUNDTABLE | SOUTHERN TIER: A VIEW FROM OUTSIDE IN
CHAIRPERSON ENGSENG HO | National University of Singapore, and Duke University
PANELISTS WU BINGBING | Peking University
BERNARD HAYKEL | Princeton University
JEAN-LOUP SAMAAN | UAE National Defense College
CEMIL AYDIN | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
18:30 END OF DAY ONE
19:00 – 20:30 CONFERENCE DINNER (FOR SPEAKERS, ORGANISERS & INVITED GUESTS ONLY)
F R I D A Y, 6 D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 9
10:30 – 12:00 PANEL 4 | THE TWO WINGS OF THE SOUTHERN TIER
CHAIRPERSON JAMES D. SIDAWAY | National University of Singapore
10:30 Navigation and Security of the Commons:
Imagining a Persian Gulf without American Protection
AMEEM LUTFI | National University of Singapore
10:50 The Strait of Hormuz and Asian Energy Security: Some Considerations
TILAK K. DOSHI | National University of Singapore
11:10 Thalassocracies and Alliances in the Making?
Middle East States in the Western Indian Ocean Region
BRENDON J. CANNON | Khalifa University
11:30 Question & Answer
12:00 – 13:00 LUNCH
13:00 – 14:30 CLOSING ROUNDTABLE
CHAIRPERSON NISHA MATHEW | National University of Singapore
14:30 END OF CONFERENCE
ABSTRACTS
Global Logistics and the Rise of Dubai—and Singapore
Engseng Ho
Asia Research Institute,
National University of Singapore, and Duke University engseng.ho@duke.edu
Dubai—and Singapore—are emblematic of the contemporary global moment, embodying dizzying success, frenetic excess, spectacular crash. Are they global cities or port-states? Are they Asian nations or corporations descended from the English EIC and Dutch VOC? Their iconic status today as global cities is not simply a function of globalization, but can be understood in terms of dynamic currents that shape and reshape places in the Indian Ocean, the original Asian venue of an international economy. Dubai and Singapore are two tiny places that have been successful because they have understood those currents, and acted in accordance with changes in their dynamics. What are these dynamics—their constants over the long term, and their recent shifts?
Engseng Ho is Professor of Anthropology and Professor of History at Duke University, USA. He is currently the Muhammad Alagil Distinguished Visiting Professor in Arabia Asia Studies at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He was previously Professor of Anthropology at Harvard and Senior Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He is a specialist on Arab/Muslim diasporas across the Indian Ocean, and their relations with western empires, past and present. His writings include The Graves of Tarim, Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean, and Empire through Diasporic Eyes: A View from the Other Boat, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46 (2), 2004.
The Horn of Africa: A View from Abu Dhabi’s Berth in the Maritime Corridor
Nisha Mathew
Middle East Institute, and
Asia Research Institute,
National University of Singapore meinmm@nus.edu.sg
The post Arab Spring years have seen the rise to prominence of tiny Persian Gulf city-states like Abu Dhabi and Qatar as key political players in the Middle East. Emerging out of the shadows of their powerful neighbors and larger states like Egypt, Syria and Libya, they have pursued a more aggressive foreign policy line and raised the stakes in the various conflicts plaguing the region. In the process, they have reset the geography of the Middle East in ways that make it an assemblage of strategic points and locations dispersed across the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. This new geography consists of ports, naval bases and special economic zones scattered but selectively linked in maritime networks gravitating towards Abu Dhabi and its allies Israel and the US, or the Southern tier.
What lies at the heart of Abu Dhabi’s ability to redraw the geographical and political map of the Middle East, and shift its center of gravity from oil-rich lands to the maritime sphere of the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa or in a broader sense, the western Indian Ocean? Arguing that it is the city-state’s appropriation and subsequent militarization of an economic model pioneered by Dubai in the late 20th century, I focus on the history of its (the model’s) evolution against the unravelling of Cold War politics and the rising competition between global state-owned shipping and logistics corporations, themselves. In laying out the historical canvas and offering an Abu Dhabi-centric perspective on the Horn of Africa, the paper asks questions that might enable analysts and policy makers to make future projections on economic and political developments in the maritime corridor as well as its hinterlands.
What advantages might accrue to an Abu Dhabi securing an entrenched position in some of ports in the Horn of Africa? Will its interests likely end with ports or will we see it extend its commercial and investment arms further inland, including in the oil fields, mines etc.? How would Abu Dhabi have to re-invent itself as a state to take on such projects? Is it likely that it will operate more like a corporation, an East India Company for the 21st century with the power to change the course of history and politics in the region? More importantly, will Abu Dhabi see the Horn as a strategic balancing arm to the Straits of Hormuz or will it supplant the latter as the arterial shipping and logistics corridor of the 21st century?
Nisha Mathew is Joint Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute and Asia, Research Institute, National University of Singapore. She received her PhD in History from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 2014 where her research explored the methodological possibilities of Indian Ocean studies in the making of a contemporary urban space as Dubai. She is currently working on her book titled 24 Carat Cities: Gold, Smuggling and Mobility in the Western Indian Ocean. It tells the story of Dubai’s rise to prominence as a 21st century global city with gold as the protagonist.
The UAE: An Emerging Middle Power in the Indian Ocean?
jean-Loup Samaan
UAE National Defense College
This paper assesses the growth of the UAE as a new player in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Specifically, this small Federation of seven emirates has been using all instruments of power to position itself as a pivotal actor in the IOR. Economically, Abu Dhabi has invested in the modernization of infrastructures in numerous littoral states of the Indian Ocean—in the Horn of Africa, small island-states such as the Maldives and the Seychelles, as well as in Pakistan. The UAE has also been one of the most active supporters of China’s Belt & Road Initiative in the Arabian Peninsula. At the diplomatic level, this translated into a rising Emirati visibility, from its supporting role in the settlement of the Eritrea-Ethiopia dispute to its upcoming chairmanship of the Indian Ocean Rim Association. Likewise, it is reflected by the increasing Emirati military footprint, beyond the Strait of Hormuz, through its nascent network of military bases in the Horn of Africa and more broadly its ongoing naval build-up. All in all, these ambitions also lead to the critical question of the Emirati position vis-à-vis the great power competition in the IOR. Can the UAE strengthen ties with both India and China without antagonizing any of them? In other words, how could the UAE maintain these ambitions without getting trapped in the Indian Ocean security dilemma?
Jean-Loup Samaan is Associate Professor in strategic studies at the UAE National Defense College. His research focuses on Middle Eastern strategic affairs, in particular Israel-Hezbollah conflict, and the evolution of the Gulf security system. His most recent book, Strategic Hedging in the Arabian Peninsula: The Politics of the Gulf-Asian Rapprochement, (Routledge, 2018), looks at the emerging nexus between Gulf countries and Asian powers. Prior to his position in the UAE, he was a researcher for the Middle East Faculty at the NATO Defense College in Rome, Italy between 2011 and 2016. He was a policy advisor at the French Ministry of Defense from 2008 to 2011 and a researcher at the RAND Corporation (Washington, DC.) from 2007 to 2008. Dr Samaan is a former student of Arabic at the French Institute of Oriental Languages and the French Institute for the Near East in Beirut, Lebanon. He graduated from the Institute for Political Studies in Grenoble, and holds a PhD in political science (2009) from the University of Paris, La Sorbonne as well as an accreditation to supervise research (2017) from the doctoral school of Sciences Po, Paris.
Old Neighbors of the New Transcontinental: The Idea of the Northern Tier
Serkan Yolaçan
Middle East Institute,
National University of Singapore meisy@nus.edu.sg
The deep-dive in Turkish-American relations led Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to develop stronger ties with his counterparts in Iran and Russia. The three presidents, strained by their failing ties with Washington, have begun to tone down their mutual differences to find much needed additional strength in one another. They may have diverging interests on a range of issues, but by compromising with one another, as they do in the case of Syria, they manage to have a collective say in the Middle Eastern affairs. By placing this newfound trio within an old geo-historical frame, this paper revives the idea of the Northern Tier with new meaning. It identifies a set of dynamics—namely, partial solutions, strongmen leaders, and a sense of shared fate among old neighbors
—to argue, somewhat provocatively, how their interplay may create an overland strip of peace and order across Eurasia at a time when China is slowly carving its West Asian passage into Europe.
Serkan Yolaçan is a Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. His research examines diasporic networks of business, religion, and education as conduits of social and political change. His book project, “The Azeri Triangle: Conversion and Revolution in West Asia,” brings to light the role of the Azeri diaspora in connecting the modern histories of Iran, Turkey, and Russia. He holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Duke University and a master’s in sociology and social anthropology from the Central European University.
Russia-Gulf Interactions in the Indo-Pacific Region
Li-Chen Sim
College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zayed University li-chen.sim@zu.ac.ae
In an earlier paper, the author suggested that the delineation of the Middle East into respective northern and southern tiers may ignore significant interactions between the two groups. The current paper explores the extent to which this holds true with regard to Russia- Gulf relations in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly given the more muscular foreign policy of the Gulf states of late. Specifically, will Russia and the Gulf draw closer thanks to synergies in their respective interests in the Indo-Pacific? Or will their competing interests in the region push them apart? The paper therefore aims to contribute to the ongoing debate about the evolution of Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership project and the role of the Indo- Pacific within it.
Li-Chen Sim is a specialist in the international and domestic political economy of Russian and Gulf energy (oil, gas, renewables, nuclear). Her publications include The Rise and Fall of Privatization in the Russian Oil Industry (Palgrave, 2008), Economic Diversification in Russia (Routledge, 2017) and External Powers and the Gulf Monarchies (Routledge, 2018). Dr Sim is currently working on a co-edited book Low-Carbon Energy in the Middle East and North Africa (Palgrave 2020) which will include her chapter on the politics of nuclear energy. At the same time, she is also writing on Gulf-Asia energy relations and Russia-Gulf interactions for other projects. Her work has appeared on Lobelog, Rising Powers, the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, and World Energy, among other platforms. She is also active on the lecture circuit and is much in demand as a guest speaker, including at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, National Defense College, Khalifa University, and New York University.
Northern Tier, Southern Tier and the Balancing Role of the Central Arab Lands
Cemil Aydin
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill caydin@email.unc.edu
This paper takes the Northern Tier and Southern Tier categories not only to make sense of contemporary Middle Eastern politics but also to rethink through political and cultural sensibilites within historically grounded networks over several centuries. Historically, many scholars and politicians conceptualized a division between North and South in the broader Middle Eastern region/Islamicate world for various political and intellectual agendas. For example, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s famous and influential book The Future of Islam (published in 1882) makes one of the first distinctions between the Southern Arab zone connected to the British ruled Indian Ocean versus the Northern Tier Muslims, composed of Turks, Tatars, Persians and Central Asian. While aware of the political agendas behind the imagined division of the Northern and Southern zones of the Islamicate Middle East and West Asia, the persistence and appeal of similar North-South divisions since the early 19th century is worth reflecting. This paper presents two centuries long overview of the Northern Tier and South Tier divisions in political, cultural, social and intellectual history of the region to shed light on the roots of the contemporary geopolitical alignments.
Cemil Aydin is Professor of İnternational/Global History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Department of History. He studied at Boğaziçi University, İstanbul University, and the University of Tokyo before receiving his PhD degree at Harvard University in 2002. He was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies (2002-2024), and a Mellon Foundation post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies (2007-2008). Cemil Aydin’s publications include his book on the Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia (Columbia University Press, 2007) and The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Harvard University Press, Spring 2017). His writings on the political history of the world in the long 19th century was published from Harvard University Press in 2018 as part of an edited volume An Emerging Modern World: 1750–1870 (2018) He currently serves as the co-editor of Columbia University Press book series on International and Global History, and editorial board member of Modern Intellectual History journal.
Is the GCC still a Viable Project?
The Gulf Crisis and the Position of Kuwait and Oman
Abdullah Baabood
Middle East Institute,
National University of Singapore abaabood@nus.edu.sg
Six of the Gulf states; Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), created in May 1981 a regional organisation known as the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) with the basic objectives of promoting cooperation among its member states, strengthening relations between them, and achieving coordination and integration across a range of diverse fields.
The GCC has evolved to become a relatively successful regional group that helped in achieving stability and security in a turbulent region. However, inter-GCC states’ conflicts and disputes have, at times, obstructed this process. The current Gulf crisis that erupted on the 5th of June 2017 pitting Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain as well as Egypt (known as the quartet) against Qatar involved cutting off diplomatic ties and a boycott/blockade of Qatar which threatens the cohesion of the GCC and its future trajectory.
Kuwait and Oman didn’t follow the quartet in their action against Qatar but kept their relations with both sides of the conflict and have been trying since then to help to reconcile both sides differences through dialogue and negotiations aiming to end this crisis that has serious implications on the region and its regional organisation.
The presentation will discuss the future of the GCC in the light of the Gulf crisis and the roles played by Kuwait and Oman in helping to keep the GCC alive!
Abdullah Baabood’s teaching and research interest focuses on international relations and international political economy. His area focus is on the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economic, social and political development and their external relations. Abdullah taught at different universities and institutions in Europe and the Gulf is currently a visiting professor at the Middle Institute (MEI), National University of Singapore. He has previously held the positions of the Director of the Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University and the Director of the Gulf Research Center at the University of Cambridge, UK. Abdullah has published widely and is frequently invited to speak on international conferences and seminars as well as media programs. He is a graduate in business and international relations and obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2004.
Navigation and Security of the Commons: Imagining a Persian Gulf without American Protection
Ameem Lutfi
Middle East Institute,
National University of Singapore meial@nus.edu.sg
In 1979 the United States government announced the Freedom Navigation of Seas program (FONS) to ensure oceans remain safe and open to all for commerce. Each year since, the US navy has deliberately passaged through contested waters and global chokepoints as deterrence against expanding shorelines, blockades, and piracy. With the US emerging in the eighties as both the political leader and commercial center of the free world, the program was seen as a pillar of Pax Americana, as well as an economic necessity for the inexorable growth of global capital. Of late, however, Trump has cast serious doubts over the continuing commercial benefits of such programs, claiming they allow rivals to freely trade without paying for protection. This paper asks, what happens to the volatile sea lanes of the Persian Gulf if FONS gets the ax? Will heavy traffic continue like before, except with China now sharing in the policing costs, as Trump wants us to believe? Or will a vicious cycle of violence engulf trade, as FONS advocates claim, with Saudi Arabia and its allies expanding their maritime jurisdiction, forcing rivals to smuggle and plunder, prompting ever tighter enclosures to finally put an end to the long-cherished freedom of the high seas? I argue that alternative arrangements are possible in the Persian Gulf in the post-FONS era, drawing from a past when shared trading spaces flourished without an imperial security blanket.
As a conceptual example, the paper turns to a structurally similar case from the nearby lands of 18th-century Gujarat, populated with numerous discontiguous small states and larger powers separated by common lands preserved for trade. In the absence of top-down security cover, common-areas flourished with mercenary-suppliers limiting banditry while preventing keeping expansionary states at bay. Mercenary-chiefs moving through the common lands, at times to enroll in state armies and at others as caravan guards, might not have had a well-articulated ideological commitment to freedom of navigation but realized their operations depend on free transit. A single state’s monopoly they knew would weaken their bargaining power in the open market. Moreover, they were aware that bandits were only possible future employees. I propose states in the Persian-Gulf, already employing a growing number of foreign soldiers, can see in this case possibilities of a regional system of managing open-waters in a FONS-less future.
Ameem Lutfi is a historical anthropologist specializing in transnational mobility and military-labor markets. His current book project titled ‘Conquest Without Rule: Baloch Portfolio-Mercenaries in the Indian Ocean’ looks at state-building in the region from the perspective of a diasporic group which has maintained a strong presence in the military infrastructure of various states in the region since at least the 16th century despite not having a state of their own. Lutfi holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University. Prior to joining Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oriental Institute at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
The Strait of Hormuz and Asian Energy Security: Some Considerations
Tilak K. Doshi
Middle East Institute,
National University of Singapore meitkd@nus.edu.sg
Located between Oman and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The Asia- Pacific region depends on the Middle East for over 60% of its oil imports. Out of 45 million barrels per day (b/d) of global crude imports in 2018, Asian imports from the Middle East account for close to 15 million b/d. Some 80% of oil exported by the Middle East via the Strait of Hormuz heads ‘East of Suez”, of which the largest markets are accounted for by China, India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. The strait also accounts for about 30% of the global LNG trade. Qatar is the world’s largest single supplier of LNG, and its exports (along with LNG exports by Oman and the UAE) to Asia traverse the Strait of Hormuz.
The recent spate of tanker attacks and vessel seizures has heightened the sense of vulnerability of Asian countries to disruptions of their oil and gas supplies from the Middle East. For Asian government planners and defense chiefs, the disruption of tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz presents a “nightmare” scenario. It is thus important that any analysis of such implications be clear and rigorous rather than a basis for offering hyperbole and over-the-top pronouncements. A sense of context and perspective are critical requirements for energy analysts and government security establishments concerned over the security of energy supplies traversing the Strait of Hormuz.
Tilak K. Doshi is Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. He is an industry expert with over 25 years of international work experience in leading oil and gas companies and think tanks. His previous appointments include Senior Fellow and Program Director, King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre (KAPSARC, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia); Chief Economist, Energy Studies Institute, National University of Singapore; Executive Director for Energy, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC, UAE); Consultant, Saudi Aramco (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia); Chief Asia Economist, Unocal Corporation (Singapore); Director for Economic and Industry Analysis, Atlantic Richfield Corporation (ARCO, Los Angeles, U.S.). Dr Doshi is the author of many articles and three books on energy economics, the most recent of which was “Singapore Chronicles: Energy” (Straits Times Press, 2016). He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Hawaii on a scholarship provided by the East-West Centre. He was one of two candidates which were granted the 1984 Robert S. McNamara Research Fellow award by World Bank, Washington, D.C., and he received a Distinction for MA in Economics by Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in 1982.
Thalassocracies and Alliances in the Making? Middle East States in the Western Indian Ocean Region
Brendon J. Cannon International Security, Institute of International and
Civil Security, Khalifa University brendon.cannon@ku.ac.ae
Some have argued that new thalassocracies—states possessing significant maritime assets to assert their power—are being born in the Arabian Gulf and western Indian Ocean region. Yet these arguments have failed to take into account the reality of national security interests and limited resource arrays of relevant states. Using the UAE as a case study and cataloguing its current naval strength as well as analyzing the realities of its port concessions, I demonstrate the state’s limited capabilities to project power to and interests in the Horn of Africa. Questions are then raised about reportedly competing alliances and their aims vis-à-vis the wider region. The findings show that a common threat in the form of Iran facing both blocs coupled with limited hard power capabilities and more pressing security concerns either domestically and/or in the states’ respective neighborhoods provide limited rationale and severely curtail the projection of hard power extra-regionally.
Brendon J. Cannon is Assistant Professor of International Security at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. His research includes the international relations of eastern Africa as well as regional security in the Gulf and western Indian Ocean. His publications have appeared in African Security, Terrorism and Political Violence, Defence Studies, and African Security Review. His forthcoming co-edited book is entitled Competition and Conflict: Confronting Indo-Pacific Realities.
About the Chairpersons, Panelists and Presenters
Bernard Haykel is Professor of Near Eastern Studies, and Director of the Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, Princeton University. His research is concerned with the political and social tensions that arise from questions about religious identity and authority. Bernard was educated at the University of Oxford where he received my doctorate in 1998 in Oriental Studies with an emphasis on Islam and history. Much of his teaching and research lies at the juncture of the intellectual, political, and social history of the Middle East with particular emphasis on the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. He also have a side interest in the effects of energy resources and rents on politics and society. An essential part of his work concerns the reception of reformist ideas at present and analysis of the Salafi heritage in contemporary debates among Sunnis as well as the Zaydi heritage among Shi`is. Another concern pertains to the history and politics of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, and Saudi Arabia in particular.
James D. Sidaway has served as Professor of Political Geography at the National University of Singapore (NUS) since January 2012. Previously he was Professor of Political and Cultural Geography at the University of Amsterdam and prior to that Professor of Human Geography at Plymouth University, UK. During the 1990s, he was a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, UK. Sidaway studies the interactions of cities, development, geopolitics and states, influenced by a wide range of postcolonial writing and theory. His other main research interest is the history and philosophy of geography. Bringing all these together is an enduring fascination with the relationship between geography and a range of area studies traditions. Recently this has led him (with NUS colleague Chih Yuan Woon) to study the reception of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative. Since June 2017, Sidaway has been involved in a new research group on Borders, Mobility and New Infrastructures, supported by the Max Weber Foundation: http://www.maxweberstiftung.de/en/ueber-uns.html. Their foci are: changing borderscapes in Southeast Asia (and between Southeast Asia and the wider world): air, land and sea; cross-border infrastructures and new scales and spaces of interaction.
Muhammad Alagil serves as the CEO of Jarir Investment and Chairman of Jarir Group, which comprises of Jarir Bookstore, Jarir Marketing, Jarir Furniture, Jarir Real Estate, Kite Arabia Ltd., Kids Kingdom and various other associate companies. Mr Alagil conceptualized and co-started Jarir Marketing and Jarir Bookstore chains, developing them into leading wholesalers and retailers in Saudi Arabia for stationery, school supplies, office machines, computer supplies, books, arts and engineering items. Since 1990 Mr Alagil has been focusing, through Jarir Investment which is a family office, on private investing both as a direct principal and with various known institutional partnerships. Jarir Investment have been investing worldwide in hedge funds, private equity, real estate and also guiding families second generation through family constitution, career planning and legal structuring.
Naoko Shimazu (DPhil, Oxon, FRHistS) is Professor of Humanities (History) and Associate Dean of Faculty at Yale-NUS College. She is a global historian of Asia, with research interests in the cultural history of global diplomacy, social and cultural history of modern societies at war, and new approaches to the study of empire. Her case studies derive from the twentieth-century, focusing on Japan, and or more broadly on Asia, including their interactions with the West. Her current major work centres on the cultural history of global diplomacy, which includes writing a research monograph on Diplomacy as Theatre: The Bandung Conference and the Making of the ‘Third World’, and acting as the editor (together with Dr Christian Goeschel) of the Oxford Handbook on the Cultural History of Global Diplomacy, 1750-2000, among others. She has published a number of related articles on the subject, in Diplomatica, Modern Asian Studies, and Political Geography. Her major publications include Imagining Japan in Post-war East Asia (co-editor, Routledge, 2013), Japanese Society at War: Death, Memory and the Russo-Japanese War (Cambridge University Press, 2009), Nationalisms in Japan (editor, Routledge, 2006), Japan, Race and Equality: Racial Equality Proposal of 1919 (Routledge, 1998).
Dr Saadaldeen Ali Talib was former Minister of Industry and Trade of Yemen. He was born in 1959 in Shibam district of Hadhramaut, and his early education was in Aden and Singapore. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of Ain Shams University in Cairo in 1985 and did post graduate surgery. In 1990 he returned to Yemen and worked as consultant for a Singapore marine engineering company. In 1997 became Member of Parliament of Yemen for Shibam district of Hadhramaut, until 2003. In 2005 he worked with the National Democratic Institute as manager of parliamentary program and general democracy development in Yemen. In 2007 he was elected by parliament as a member of the first anti- corruption commission in Yemen, the Supreme National Authority for Combating Corruption. Dr Talib resigned the post in 2009 and went into exile in Singapore. He returned to Yemen in December 2011 as Minister of Industry and Trade. After the cabinet change in November 2014, returned to exile in Singapore. Dr Talib has written several papers on Yemen’s democracy and the Hadhramaut diaspora, and presented at many conferences.
Tim Bunnell is Professor in the Department of Geography and Director of the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. Tim’s research as a human geographer concerns issues of urban development in Southeast Asia, and that region’s global connections. His Liverpool-centred ‘Malay Routes’ project culminated in the publication of From World City to the World in One City: Liverpool through Malay Lives (Wiley, 2016). Tim’s latest book is Urban Asias: Essays on Futurity Past and Present (Jovis, 2018—co-edited with Daniel P.S. Goh).
Wu Bingbing is Research Fellow at Peking University’s Institute for International and Strategic Studies, Deputy Director of the University’s Department of Arabic Language and Culture, and Director of the University’s Institute of Arab-Islamic Studies. He researches contemporary Middle Eastern politics, China- Middle East relations, and Islamic culture.