Exploring New Dimensions of Asymmetrical Security, Oct 1, 2008, Singapore

Date: 1 Oct 2008
Location: National University of Singapore
Event Type: Workshop
Activity Area: Security

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The ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing in Security's (CEPS's) security program component at the Australian National University (ANU), will be co-hosting a workshop in Singapore on 01 October 2008 entitled “Exploring New Dimensions of Asymmetrical Security.” The Department of Political Science of the National University of Singapore (NUS) will be the event's other sponsor. Both CEPS and the NUS will conduct the workshop under the auspices of the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) to which, both the ANU and the NUS are affiliated.

The workshop will focus on selected problems of counter-terrorism, criminal justice and human security. It will specifically review how links between Australian and Singaporean institutions concerned with these issues can be strengthened. The event is being organised by Professor William Tow, a Chief Investigator of the CEPS Security Project and Professor of International Relations at the ANU with his NUS counterparts, Associate Professors Bilveer Singh and Lee Lai To.

The workshop is being expected to be ‘power-packed' in terms of the reputation and expertise of its participants. It will include representatives from the academe and the police forces of Australia and Singapore. The Australian delegation will be composed of CEPS Deputy Director Peter Grabosky, AFP National Manager for Policy and Future Studies Judith Lind, and Professor Simon Bronitt who is the Director of the National Europe Centre and concurrent Associate Director of the Australian Centre of Military Law and Justice of the ANU College of Law.

On the Singapore side, the workshop will be joined by the NUS Political Science Department Head, Professor Terry Nardin, Ms. Jolene Anne Jerard of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Federal Agent Peter Crozier, AFP Liaison and Counsellor at the Australian High Commission to Singapore, and members of the Singapore National Police. Other distinguished participants who will attend are Professor Michael Wesley, CEPS Chief Investigator and Director of the Griffith Asia Institute, Professor Kiichi Fujiwara of the Tokyo University, Professor Jack Donnelly of the Graduate School of International Studies of the University of Denver, USA, and Major General (Ret) ANM Muniruzzaman, the President of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies.

The organizers anticipate that this workshop will foreshadow a larger conference to be sponsored by IARU and to be convened in Singapore within the next two years. It will deal with a much broader scope of issue areas, including terrorism, insurgency movements generated by religious and ethnic problems, and economic disparities. Although it will be conducted on a national holiday in Singapore, the workshop has already received much interest from NUS postgraduates and other invited guests.