About the Roundtable
Southeast Asia is a distinctly maritime region. Nine out of ten Southeast Asian states are coastal states, with two of them (Indonesia and the Philippines) being the world’s largest archipelagic states. Southeast Asian waters host major sea lanes of communication between the Indian and Pacific oceans, and most Southeast Asian States are either major flag states, port states or seafaring states. It is unsurprising that maritime security has always been a pressing concern for Southeast Asian states, particularly as challenges continue to evolve against a backdrop of new technologies and increasingly complex geopolitical relationships.
To this end, the Centre for International Law (CIL) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Blue Security Program are bringing together established and emerging experts in maritime security to have an open and wide-ranging discussion on some of the critical maritime security challenges faced by Southeast Asian states today, from both a national and regional perspective. Moderated by Dr. Troy Lee- Brown (Western Australia’s Defence and Security Institute) and Professor Rebecca Strating (La Trobe University), the Roundtable Discussion will feature Emeritus Professor Robert Beckman (CIL), Dita Liliansa (CIL), Ivy Ganadillo (Ewha Womans University) and Tangguh Chairil (Bina Nusantara University) to share their insights on a variety of issues. The discussion will include challenges posed to Southeast Asian states by the use of autonomous vessels and underwater vehicles, the passage rights of submarines as well as national perspectives on maritime security challenges.
About the Speakers:
Dr Troy Lee-Brown is a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia's Defence and Security Institute, with an interest in regional security, maritime security and international relations in the Indo-Pacific. He is currently the editor of the ‘Black Swan Strategy Paper’ and the project manager for ‘Blue Security’ Maritime Exchange, which focuses on issues of maritime security in Southeast Asia.
Rebecca (Bec) Strating is the Director of La Trobe Asia and an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations in the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University, Melbourne. She is interested in the politics of maritime disputes in Asia, and is the lead of the DFAT-funded “Blue Security” maritime exchange program.
Robert Beckman is the Co-head of the Ocean Law and Policy programme of the Centre for International Law (CIL) and was the founding Director of CIL. He is also an Emeritus Professor at the NUS Faculty of Law, where he taught Ocean Law & Policy for many years. He currently teaches a course in International Regulation of Shipping at the NUS Faculty of Law. Since 2009 he has lectured in the summer programme at the Rhodes Academy of Oceans Law and Policy in Rhodes, Greece, and he is a member of the Governing Board for the Rhodes Academy. He has published widely on ocean law and policy issues. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Maritime Security Programme of the Institute for Defence & Strategic Studies (IDSS) at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He has been nominated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam as an Arbitrator under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Tangguh Chairil is currently a faculty member of the Department of International Relations at Bina Nusantara University (Binus), Jakarta, Indonesia. His scientific discipline is International Relations studies, with focus on Security Studies. He teaches courses on security studies and foreign policy. His research fields include defense and military studies, with security issues in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, as his center of interest.
Dita Liliansa is a Research Associate at the Ocean Law and Policy Programme, Centre for International Law (CIL), National University of Singapore (NUS). She obtained her first law degree from the University of Indonesia in 2014, and her LLM in Sustainable International Development Law from the University of Washington in 2017 as a Fulbright scholar. She is a Second-Prize Winner of the 2021 Asian Society of International Law (AsianSIL) Junior Scholar Award. She attended the IFLOS Summer Academy at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) in 2018 where she was awarded the prize for the best oral argumentation in the moot court competition. In addition to research, she is active in teaching university students and training government officials as well as participates in ASEAN, IMO and Arctic Council meetings as an observer. Her research interests lie at the intersection of law, science and policy in the context of marine environment and maritime security.
Ivy Ganadillo is an International Relations Ph.D. candidate at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. She holds a Master of Arts in Asian Studies with a concentration in China from the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Ms. Ganadillo is a former university lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University's Chinese Studies Department and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines-International Manila's Studies Department. She lectured to several Armed Forces of the Philippines offices and worked as a consultant and defense analyst at the Philippine Navy's Office of Naval Strategic Studies.
About the Organizers:
The Centre for International Law (CIL) is a university-level research centre at the National University of Singapore whose mission is to enable Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region to play a more significant role in the promotion and development of international law, including being a regional intellectual hub and thought leader for research and teaching of international law (https://cil.nus.edu.sg/)
The Blue Security Program engages with and facilitates high quality research on issues of critical maritime security across the Indo-Pacific. Bringing together leading regional experts in politics, international law and strategic studies, Blue Security focuses on three key pillars of maritime security: order, law and power. Blue Security is a collaboration between La Trobe Asia, Griffith Asia Institute (GAI), University of New South Wales Canberra (ADFA), University of Western Australia’s Defence and Security Institute (DSI) and the Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue (AP4D). It produces working papers, commentaries, and scholarly publications related to maritime security for audiences across the Indo-Pacific. Blue Security receives funding support from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia (https://www.latrobe.edu.au/asia/research-initiatives/blue-security)egister