Message from the Director
Dear ANU Malaysia Institute subscribers,
I write to let you know that after nine years I will be stepping down as Director of the ANU Malaysia Institute. I will be taking some parental leave in 2026 but will continue to be involved in the Institute activities as a board member. Nine years is a long time in any role. For example, over that time there’s been five different Malaysian Prime Ministers!
I have enjoyed the role enormously and have learnt much from and about Malaysia during my tenure. If you can indulge me a little, this seems a good opportunity to thank some of the people involved in the setting up of the Institute and to reflect on the Institute’s core mission over these nine years.
The Institute was first established in 2017 due to the hard work of a few ANU scholars who wanted to make sure the ANU continued to prioritise Malaysia, given its long history of outstanding scholarship in Malaysian studies. John Funston, Virginia Hooker and Greg Fealy really drove that initiative, and they continue to be valuable members of our community. Our initial collaborations with the University of Kebangsaan Malaysia were crucial, and AB Shamsul was always generous with his time and efforts. Shamsul and I spent many hours driving back and forth to Putrajaya over the early years of the Institute’s formation.
All of us were aware that the key to the ANU Malaysia Institute’s success is academic expertise on Malaysia. Malaysia expertise in Australia has diminished markedly over the past few decades and as universities all around Australia continue to hollow out and cut programs and staff, rebuilding Malaysian studies will be challenging.
There are plenty of organisations running occasional events and activities but, to be more than just a glorified events organisation, you need to have in-house expertise, and the more of it, the better. Ideally, that includes scholars, PhD students, meaningful visiting fellowships and active research collaborations. Over the years the challenge for the Institute has been to not just expand its activities, but grow and nurture Malaysia expertise at the ANU as well.
The other core aim was to remind people that Australia could learn much from Malaysia. Over the past nine years almost everyone I meet for the first time in my role as Director assumes that I am running some low-cost, STEM-centric ANU campus in Malaysia, such is the trend of Southeast Asian ‘engagement’ in Australian higher education.
But we strived to emphasise that the Institute should be a research-intensive initiative in order to grow intellectual collaborations, in particular with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. Furthermore, our mission is for Australians to understand more about Malaysia, hence our regular Update conferences and other Canberra-based events.
Research collaborations with Malaysian partners remain crucial to the Institute, and I’d like to thank some of them here. The researchers at IDEAS Malaysia are always a pleasure to work with, first under Tricia Yeoh and now under Aira Azhari. Academic staff at the University of Nottingham’s Malaysia campus were always terrific, and in more recent times I’ve enjoyed any collaboration with people at ISIS Malaysia and the Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research.
The Australian High Commission to Malaysia has been hugely supportive and no matter who was in charge, they understood the contribution that the Institute has made to Australia-Malaysia relations since 2017. Some of our specialist programs have been funded by DFAT over the years, which has allowed us to increase our collaborations and activities.
Deputy Director Ying Xin Show has been a tremendous addition to ANU and the Malaysia Institute since she arrived in 2019. Our affiliates have been constant pillars of support for me and for the Institute, and have always provided much needed energy and expertise to activities and initiatives. I would especially like to thank Professor Meredith Weiss and Kean Wong for being constant sounding boards over the nine years. Our MI board, including some committed PhD students from Malaysia, are critical in keeping the Institute running. I would like to thank the board for their continual work over the years, and I look forward to serving on it in years to come.
Finally, the College of Asia and the Pacific led by Dean Professor Helen Sullivan continues to be the key supporter of the ANU Malaysia Institute and provides its essential core funding. The continual work of Yanhong Ouyang and the CAP Partnerships team has been critical. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say without Yanhong I would have stepped down years ago!
The new MI Director will be announced soon and I’m sure my replacement will do a great job. I look forward to seeing you at our next event.
Ross
Dr Ross Tapsell
Director, ANU Malaysia Institute