Global Asia Research Centre (GARC)
The Global Asia Research Centre positions the College as a regional hub for scholarship on Asia in global context. Our work grows from the conviction that research based in Asia can generate new concepts for understanding politics, economics, governance, and social change with relevance far beyond the region.
Asia is shaping global conversations on development, technology, climate adaptation, and governance. Yet many global theories draw on western experiences. Our centre seeks to invert this norm by grounding global understanding in Asian realities, methodologies, and intellectual traditions.
The centre will strengthen NTU’s capacity to become a recognised locus for global public affairs, drawing on Asia-centred research to reshape international debates.
A. Two Major Strands
The centre advances two research strands:
- Politics and Governance Examining how states, institutions, and communities govern plural societies, manage change, and navigate global pressures.
- Trade and Political Economy Studying regional economic integration, global supply chains, financial systems, and Southeast Asian and South Asian economic transformations.
B. Activities
- Visiting fellows and policy dialogues
- Data and archival collaborations with regional partners
- Workshops and conferences on Global Asia concepts
- Support for early-career scholars and postgraduate researchers
- Co-development of public affairs curricula and teaching innovations
NTU Global Asia Research Centre Monthly Series presents:
The Illiberal Peace Turn? Trends and Contestation in Asia
Speaker: DB Subedi is a Lecturer at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. His research interests are in peace and conflict studies, religion and politics, and populism and nationalism in the Asia Pacific region.
Abstract:
In this seminar, Dr Subedi examines the contested discourses surrounding peace and peacebuilding in Asia, with particular attention to the emerging ‘illiberal peace turn’ and its broader global implications. Drawing on experiences from South and Southeast Asia, Dr Subedi explores how peacebuilding practices are being reimagined in response to two converging dynamics.
First, the region continues to grapple with persistent ethnic, identity, and liberation conflicts that challenge state authority and legitimacy from below. Second, liberal peacebuilding frameworks, once dominant in shaping conflict transformation, have come under increasing critique for their lack of cultural and contextual sensitivity amid a wider global retreat of liberal norms. Attempts to reconcile liberal peace with local realities through “hybrid peace” have often entrenched authoritarian power and state dominance, sometimes even exacerbating conflicts.
Against this backdrop, Dr Subedi shows how a new form of peacebuilding is emerging across the Asia-Pacific, shaped by concerns with stability, legitimacy, development, and regime security. Yet illiberal peacebuilding faces resistance from below and competitive pressures from above. Dr Subedi argues, while it represents a significant departure from liberal ideas of peace, it remains far from offering a coherent alternative to liberal–hybrid peacebuilding.