[Moderator] Prof Joseph Liow (Joseph Chinyong Liow) is Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Wang Gungwu Professor in East Asian Affairs, National University of Singapore and concurrently, Chairman of the Middle East Institute at the same university. He was previously Dean of College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he was also Tan Kah Kee Chair in Comparative and International Politics, and Professor and Dean at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He held the inaugural Lee Kuan Yew Chair in Southeast Asia Studies at the Brookings Institution, Washington DC, where he was also a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program.

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 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 have also appeared in New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, CNN, National Interest, Nikkei Asian Review, Wall Street Journal, and South China Morning Post. He has testified to the United States Congress, delivered a special closed door briefing to the ASEAN Defence Minister’s Meeting, and been invited to give briefings to global leaders including former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. In addition to scholarship and policy analysis, Joseph has also consulted for a wide range of MNCs including Shell, BHP Billiton, Morgan Stanley, Canon, Chevron, Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Temasek, Total, Global Dairy Platform, Evli, and Equinor. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Experts and Eminent Persons Group of the ASEAN Regional Forum, and sits on the board of several peer-reviewed academic and policy journals. Joseph is also on the boards of the Social Science Research Council (Singapore), ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and the National Arts Council.

He holds a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science, a MSc in Strategic Studies from the Nanyang Technological University, and a BA (Hons) in Political Science from the University of Madison-Wisconsin.