Singapore Management University (SMU) President Prof Lily Kong met King’s College London President Prof Edward Byrne on Monday, 28th October 2019 in London to inaugurate a university-wide undergraduate student exchange programme between both universities.
Scheduled to commence in Fall 2020, the exchange programme is the first in a series of collaborations between SMU and King’s College London. Prior to the signing ceremony, discussions had been underway between the business schools and research institutes of both universities on a suite of master’s programme collaborations, and joint research and comparative studies in complementary fields of data analytics, IoT technologies and AI, respectively.
The next day, Prof Kong delivered a keynote address on the development of smart cities in Southeast Asia on 29th October at the LSE Southeast Asia Forum 2019. The full-day Forum, organised as an annual flagship event of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, brought together leading Southeast Asia experts who discussed a range of pressing issues, including urbanisation and sustainability.
Prof Kong’s keynote address presented a research paper which she had co-authored with SMU School of Social Sciences Assistant Prof Orlando Woods titled “Scaling Smartness, (De)Provincialising The City? The ASEAN Smart Cities Network and the predictable politics of technocratic regionalism”. In addition to delivering a critical examination of ASEAN’s smart city and urbanisation initiatives, Professor Kong’s keynote address made reference to the themes discussed at the inaugural SMU City Dialogues, which took place in Singapore on 25 October 2019. The forum focused on managing environmental risks for the social and ecological sustainability of cities.
In addition, Prof Kong also met with the leaders of LSE and Imperial College London to learn more about their innovation, city engagement and research strategies, and explored new collaborations with these leading universities.
These engagements underscore the university’s commitment to addressing societal challenges of global relevance through international partnerships, furthering SMU’s development as an impactful global city university in Asia.
[Featured photo: SMU President Prof Lily Kong and King’s College London President Prof Edward Byrne signed an inaugural university-wide student exchange agreement on 28th October 2019.]
