University of Tasmania, Australia

The Tasmania Asia Institute is an initiative of the University of Tasmania in partnership with the State Government of Tasmania.

It will foster engagement with Asia by different sectors of the Tasmanian community and promote the development of an Asia-capable Tasmanian workforce.  

 The Institute will build coalitions of expertise across the university, business and industry, education and the community to create new economic, educational and cultural opportunities for Tasmanians in Asia.

This forum is to advise and take feedback from all interested parties across the University and the wider community. 

Speakers include: Dr Kaz Ross, Dr Mark Harrison & Professor Pam Allen.

UTAS Staff and Students and interested persons from the Business, Industry, Government & Community sectors are invited to attend.

Further Information about the The Tasmania Asia Institute

The Tasmania Asia Institute is unique among many Asia initiatives by Australian universities. It will work collaboratively to mobilise the expertise and engagement with Asia that can already be found in the university and across the state and develop the untapped potential that will come from new partnerships.

The Institute responds to challenging circumstances for Tasmania and Australia. Since Federation, the nation has faced the need to achieve prosperity and security in its international political and economic relationships. After two world wars, as Australia formally came under the US security umbrella with the ANZUS treaty in 1951, we debated the Commonwealth as a structure for international trade relations that supported particular economic sectors.
When Great Britain joined the EEC in 1973, Australia turned to the growing nations of North East Asia to rethink our prosperity in terms of their model of open, export-oriented economies enabled by the free flow of capital and goods. This orientation towards the rising economies of Asia has supported a remarkable period of economic growth in Australia, most recently with the mining boom.

As we began to understand our place in Asia in the 1980s, those countries were themselves realising extraordinary cultural, political and social transformations through the emergence of their urban middle classes. Today, those changes now present us with both the opportunity and also the need to think again about how we will sustain our prosperity beyond commodities trade.

The social transformation in Asia through education and economic growth has created new and discerning markets for services and products and enabled industrial and agricultural development that utilises the most current science and engineering. It has also created new audiences for arts, culture and ideas. Prosperity in this era needs networks of information and experience that are able to cross the boundaries of science, arts, business and government to engage with the new markets, audiences and publics that Asia encompasses.

The brief of the Tasmania Asia Institute to build coalitions and partnerships of expertise within the university and across in Tasmania addresses a richer understanding of the region. The Institute can access university expertise that includes languages and culture, business, agricultural science, law, health science and marine and maritime science, all of which represent critical needs and challenges for the region. The Institute will support the universityâs presence in Asia to attract more of the best students from the region to Tasmania and send the best Tasmanian students into Asia.

In its goals, the Institute draws upon the understanding of the Tasmania's island history, geography and identity that is shared by its diverse communities. In this way, the Tasmania Asia Institute is an initiative that not only addresses new challenges and opportunities facing the state in the region but does so in a way that is only possible in Tasmania.