Official Opening of AEI-THAB-ASEM Summer School themed “Civic Engagement and Sustainable Development”

The AEI-THAB-ASEM Summer School 2022 has been opened officially by Datin Noorazah binti Omar, Undersecretary of the International Relations Division from the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia. Datin Noorazah welcomed this ongoing summer school initiative and noted how this can help bridge the continents and stimulate mobility.  In his welcoming address, the Executive Director of the AEI, Distinguished Professor Dato Dr Rajah Rasiah also underlined the relevance of the theme in these times and the importance of building connections across different countries.

The AEI Summer School is an ongoing initiative to enhance the balanced mobility of students, researchers and academics between Asia and Europe and is in line with one of the decisions of ASEMME 4 in May 2013, Kuala Lumpur. THAB/Aschaffenburg University of Applied Sciences is the European co-host of this year’s online summer school programme.

This year’s summer school, themed “Civic Engagement and Sustainable Development”  focuses on a student-led workshop and forum which allows students to discuss and explore different aspects of the theme in a multicultural setting with participants from Asia and Europe. This successful ongoing AEI ASEM Summer School initiatives aims at acting as a bridge to connect Asia and European students and lecturers.  

Dr. Nurliana Kamaruddin, AEI, Universiti Malaya and Prof. Dr. Alexandra Angress, THAB/Aschaffenburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany are the coordinators of this year’s AEI-THAB ASEM summer school programme. They have also been the initiators piloting the ASEM COIL project initiative in 2021  to connect students and teachers from their respective institutions to work on cross-cultural aspects of collaboration during the pandemic.

This year’s online summer school is a flexible 2-week program where participants attend online modules with speakers covering different topics in line with the overall theme such as civic engagement and social participation, youth social advocacy in selected ASEM partner countries such as in Malaysia, initiatives for a green university or campus in the future and sustainability and digitization. During the week ahead summer school participants will be working in virtual teams facilitated by lectures from both host universities to discuss selected aspects pertaining to civil engagement and engage in interactive group work to prepare for a final student-led forum on one selected aspects based on their experience and suggestions at the end of the online programme.  

All details can be found on the main website of the AEI Summer School programme https://aei.um.edu.my/ss2022