Dr Helena Varkkey is an Associate Professor of Political Ecology at the Department of International and Strategic Studies, Universiti Malaya. Her areas of expertise include transboundary haze governance in Southeast Asia and global palm oil politics. Her monograph on “The Haze Problem in Southeast Asia: Palm Oil and Politics” was published by Routledge in 2016. Her latest book is a collection of essays on the politics of haze and the environment in Southeast Asia called “The Forests for the Palms” published by ISEAS Singapore in 2021. Dr Helena has almost two decades of experience in qualitative research, including conducting fieldwork, interviews, and focus groups among various government and non-government stakeholders, and has built up extensive research networks in countries across ASEAN. She has edited and produced reports for the Academy of Sciences Malaysia, UNICEF, and the ASEAN Secretariat.

  Started his research career in the think tank sector, Dr. Lee Chee Leong (Karl) is attracted to the rise of non-traditional diplomacy in the international order today. Such appeal has taken Dr. Lee into new research horizons that started with his Monash University's doctoral research on the Chinese sub-state diplomacy in China-ASEAN economic cooperation. With constructive supervision by Professor Helen Nesadurai and Associate Professor Kuik Cheng Chwee, Dr. Lee completed his doctoral thesis that unravels how a faraway and least developed sub-state of Guangxi managed to overcome its own hurdles, navigate the complexities within the Chinese state and become the frontline actor in China-ASEAN economic cooperation.  Following his doctoral completion, Dr. Lee's research on non-traditional diplomacy has expanded into Taiwan’s quasi-state diplomacy in Southeast Asia. Such quest has led him spending at great length in comprehending the concept of soft power, a concept that finds its relevance to Taiwan, which has no official diplomatic with Southeast Asia but is heavily connected to the region and has to rely on soft power in its engagements with these Southeast Asian nations. By comparing different case studies of Taiwan's quasi-state engagement within Southeast Asia, Dr. Lee has developed the soft power diffusion process to explain how such phenomenon operates in the real world. His ongoing and incoming research projects include Unpacking ‘De-risking’ China in the Indo-Pacific Region: Economic Statecraft (ES) & Geoeconomics, Taiwan's New Southbound Policy (NSP) and NSP+: The Domestic-International Dichotomy, The Taiwanese Connections in Nvidia's Global AI Supply Chain and Taiwan and Ireland: The Story of Two Tech Powerhouses.  To date, Dr. Lee was the recipient of several scholarships and fellowships in Malaysia and overseas: University of Malaya’s Graduate Fellowship (2010-2011); Monash University’s Merit Scholarship (2016-2019); Chinese Government Scholarship (2018-2019); and Taiwan Fellowship (2020). Prior to his appointment as Senior Lecturer at the Institute of China Studies (ICS), he was the Visiting Scholar at Guangxi University for Nationalities (GXUN) (2018-2019), Taiwan Fellow at National Chengchi University (NCCU) (2020) and Associate Fellow at ICS UM (2016-2019). He welcomes any potential PhD candidate who would like to work on Taiwan-Southeast Asia relations, comparative cases of ES between Asia and Europe, US-China-ASEAN semiconductor geoeconomics and case studies of donut economies in Asia. He is also willing to discuss with potential doctoral candidates on proposals related to the Chinese sub-state (provincial and city) diplomacy toward ASEAN, comparative cases of sub-state diplomacy between Asia and Europe as well as conceptual innovations of sub-state diplomacy vis-a-vis soft power.     

Dr Hasniyati Hamzah is a senior lecturer with the Department of Real Estate, Faculty of Built Environment, Universiti Malaya. She holds PhD in Property from University of Auckland, New Zealand. Dr. Hasniyati actively researches and publishes in the areas of housing, smart cities, urban studies, real estate law and real estate education. Her main research expertise is in housing tenure, which has led to the Malaysian Surveyor's Best Paper (PMVS Division) 2015 and a consultancy with Iskandar Regional Development Authority (IRDA) on the Rent-to-Own scheme in Iskandar Malaysia. Among her research topics are housing pathways, alternative housing tenure, Mass Customised Housing, Smart Cities and professional socialisation among real estate students. She also studies strata management law in Malaysia, particularly the strata tribunal and the management for mixed strata development (sub-MC). Her research approaches have mainly leaned towards qualitative and mixed methods. Dr Hasniyati has published in top tier journals including Urban Studies, Housing Theory and Society, Journal of Housing and Built Environment, Open House International and Pacific Rim Real Estate Society Journal. She is a member of the Pacific Rim Real Estate Society (PRRES), Royal Institution of Surveyors Malaysia (RISM) and Malaysian Institute of Property and Facilities Management (MIPFM).  She currently serves as External Examiner for Institut Penilaian Negara (INSPEN). In the past, she has sat in the Examination and Publication Sub-committees of the Property Surveying Division of the Royal Institution of Surveyors Malaysia for 2022/23 session. She has also served as Article Editor for SAGE Open, Internal Journal of Property Sciences and Journal of Design and Built Environment, besides serving as a reviewer for a number of local and international journals. In terms of teaching, Dr Hasniyati teaches predominantly real estate law subjects and has examined PhD and masters theses on the subject. She currently supervises PhD students undertaking research in strata management, public housing maintenance, Transit Oriented Development and Smart City.