Forces of Change: Transformation from the Lens of Academic Diplomacy

Abstract

This chapter explains the ‘curiosity-cum-responsibility’ of academics to view developing countries in Asia through the lens of ‘academic diplomacy’: facilitating responsibility-to-protect through engaged academic means. The approach focuses on ‘soft power’ of academia that is utilised to promote ‘prevention-driven’ and local action-based activities that can bring non-academic and academic collaboration to generate a basic social change shaping from the locals, and gradually towards a wider effect—social transformation. The primary aim of academic diplomacy is to empower the local communities and individuals through the application of information, communication, indigenous knowledge with social innovation, native initiatives, and academia dissemination that they do not have easy access to. The chapter thus proposes to develop academic diplomacy with an overarching ambition to provoke innovative and flexible thinking about potential responses to problems and challenges common in India, Myanmar, and Thailand, and a vehicle in reaching the communities and their habitats for building capacity.