The East Asian International Relations (EAIR) Caucus is a network of researchers who share an interest in studying scholarly and policy issues related to contemporary inter-state interactions in Southeast and Northeast Asia.
Functioning as a meeting-of-minds platform, the Caucus aspires to serve as a hub for connecting researchers, a host for cultivating constructive exchanges across institutional boundaries, and a home for empowering the next generation of IR and area specialists in Malaysia. Caucus members include academics and researchers from universities and think-tanks within Malaysia and around the world. Since its creation in August 2014, the EAIR Caucus has conducted a wide range of activities to foster the goals of exchange, engagement, and empowerment. These include a forum series featuring renowned scholars from across the globe, including ANU, British Columbia, Delaware, East-West Center, Harvard, Universitas Indonesia, Johns Hopkins, Kobe, La Trobe, LSE, MGIMO, NUS, George Washington, and Stanford.
Furthermore, the Caucus has hosted several international collaborative programs, such as a symposium on IR theory in collaboration with Seoul National University, and a workshop on Southeast Asian states’ responses to China’s “Belt and Road” Initiative in collaboration with Queen Mary University of London. On top of this, the Caucus has embarked on several research projects exploring various emerging aspects of regional affairs.
Such research areas include: small-state foreign policy behavior, regional institutions, ASEAN and ASEAN-based multilateralism, asymmetric power relations, non-traditional security issues, geopolitics of connectivity, the political economies of East Asian states and Southeast Asia-Northeast Asia linkages. Moreover, the Caucus contributes theoretical efforts to better understand these wide-ranging issue areas.