As Asia enters the 21st century, it faces political, economic, and social challenges that transcend national boundaries. To meet these challenges, the region needs a pool of public intellectuals committed to be active in the public sphere who can articulate common concerns and propose creative solutions for the society.

Recognizing that opportunities for intellectual exchange were limited by institutional, linguistic, and cultural parameters, The Nippon Foundation (TNF) in cooperation with the key academic institutions in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand launched the Asian Public Intellectuals (API) Fellowships Program in July 2000. The Program’s primary aim was to promote mutual learning among Asian public intellectuals and contribute to the growth of wider public spaces in which effective responses to regional needs can be generated. The Program is unique as it aims not only to support and nurture individual public intellectuals, but also to stimulate cross border collaboration among multi-disciplined professionals from different background, to share their best practices as well as forging new ideas to the common regional pressing issues.

API is a regional program operated by five Partner Institutions. These include the Institute of Asian Studies, IAS (Chulalongkorn University), the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (Kyoto University), the School of Social Sciences (Ateneo de Manila University), the Institute of Malaysian and International Studies (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) and the Center for Social and Cultural Studies (Indonesian Institute of Science). Since its founding, IAS has served as one of the five Partner Institutions of the Program, responsible for local administration and coordination for both outgoing and incoming fellows. Since 2005, IAS has also functioned as its Coordinating Institution (CI) for the Program, acting as the regional secretariat for the Program in organizing and facilitating regional-level activities.

To strengthen regional focus of the Program, and with the increasing importance of the Mekong sub-region, the Program has expanded its scope of activities to CLV countries, namely Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, in 2010. In the year 2012, capturing the dynamism of Myanmar following its recent liberalization and democratization process, qualified intellectuals from Myanmar were invited to join the Program.

Contact : Telephone 02-218-7422

Website : http://www.api-fellowships.org