- 01 Dec 2025
S R Nathan Distinguished Lecture 2025
[Update] Mark your calendars for the new date! The S R Nathan Distinguished Lecture 2025 has been moved to 1 December 2025.
Our esteemed speaker has been called to duty as part of an official delegation to Washington D.C. We are grateful for your flexibility and understanding and look forward to seeing you on the new date!
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The aim of the S R Nathan Distinguished Lecture is to provide greater awareness and understanding of the modern Middle East. This lecture provides a forum for statesmen, internationally prominent scholars and public intellectuals to express their views on key issues. The lecture series is named in honour of Singapore’s late former president, Mr S R Nathan, who encouraged a deeper understanding of the Middle East region in Singapore.
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Sustaining the Saudi Success Story
Despite the conflicts roiling the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has not stopped pursuing its social and economic agendas. Vision 2030 represents one of the region’s most ambitious national transformations, seeking not just economic diversification away from oil dependence, but also groundbreaking social reforms. Since its introduction in April 2016 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, remarkable milestones include non-oil sectors contributing over 50 per cent of GDP, and women’s workforce participation surging from 17 to 36.2 per cent.
Alongside this, entertainment activities once thought unthinkable, ranging from concerts featuring Western superstars to e-sports tournament, are now routine in the Saudi landscape. The Kingdom has also launched numerous giga-projects to turn its cities into both tourism and investment hubs. Legal reforms have also been rolled out to turn Saudi Arabia into a conductive, international business environment.
The Middle East Institute will host HE Mr Mohammed Khalid Alyahya, the adviser to the Saudi Foreign Minister, to delve into the revolutionary changes in Saudi Arabia, and how the Kingdom is branding itself as the beacon of the region. It will also highlight how investors and firms from abroad can engage with its increasingly open business environment.
This event will be conducted both in-person and online via Zoom on Monday, 1 December from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (SGT). This event is free, however, registration is compulsory. Successful registrants will receive a confirmation email with the Zoom details closer to the date of the event.
For participants joining us via zoom, please register here.
View the programme here.
Supported by:
About the Speakers
Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Mohammed Khalid Alyahya is an advisor to the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia HH Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud.
He was a senior fellow at the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School, for the Fall 2023 semester where he taught a study group on great power competition in the Middle East. He was also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Peace and Security.
From 2019 to 2023, he was the editor-in-chief of Al Arabiya English, the digital English language service of the largest pan-Arab free-to-air regional news network. He was a senior research fellow at the Gulf Research Centre and a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. His analysis has been published
by the European Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, and the Royal United Services Institute in London. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, the Telegraph, the Guardian, and The Independent among other outlets. He has also appeared as a commentator on the BBC, CNN and CNBC, among other outlets.
Alyahya has a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and a BA in Political Science with a concentration on International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania.
Chairman
Middle East Institute, NUS
[Moderator] Prof Joseph Liow (Joseph Chinyong Liow) is Dean of College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he is also Tan Kah Kee Chair in Comparative and International Politics and concurrently Senior Research Advisor for the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). He was previously Dean of RSIS from October 2014 to December 2018. He also previously held the inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Chair in Southeast Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC.
Joseph’s research interests encompass Muslim politics and social movements in Southeast Asia and the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific region. Joseph is the author, co-author, or editor of 18 books, the most recent being Navigating Uncertainty: Our Region in an Age of Flux (World Scientific 2024), Islam and Political Power in Indonesia and Malaysia (Cambridge University Press Element Series 2022) and Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Southeast Asia, fifth edition (Routledge 2022).
A regular columnist for the Straits Times, his commentaries on international affairs has also appeared in New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, National Interest, Nikkei Asian Review, Wall Street Journal, and South China Morning Post. He has testified to the United States Congress and been invited to deliver a special closed door briefing to the ASEAN Defence Minister’s Meeting. In addition to scholarship and policy analysis, Joseph has also consulted for a wide range of multinationals including Shell, BHP Billiton, Chevron, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Temasek, Total, and Statoil, as well as major global consultancies. He sits on the board of several peer-reviewed academic and policy journals, and is Singapore representative on the Experts and Eminent Persons Group of the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Trilateral Commission. He is also on the boards of the Social Science Research Council (Singapore), ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, and the National Arts Council. He will assume the position of Chairman, Middle East Institute on 1 September 2024.
He has degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Nanyang Technological University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Event Details
1 Cuscaden Rd, Singapore 249715
2. via Zoom
