About Us

The project will be led by KASEAS (Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies) with administrative support from a dedicated Project Management Team based in Seoul. The AKPGM project is supported by the ASEAN-Korea Cooperation Fund (AKCF).

Founded in 1991, KASEAS is the leading academic association of Southeast Asianists in Korea, spearheading scholarly and policy-oriented exchanges with ASEAN. It has organized annual advanced seminars in partnership with SEASREP (2005–2016), convened 11 Korea-ASEAN Academic Conferences with eight preparatory workshops (1994–2016), and hosted 21 ASEAN Forums in Korea alongside 19 Korea Forums in Southeast Asia (2005–2016), providing vital platforms for dialogue on regional dynamics and policy implications. Through its affiliate KISEAS, KASEAS has also served as Korea’s coordinating institution for the Network of East Asian Think-tanks (NEAT) since 2003, further advancing regional cooperation under the ASEAN+3 framework.

Oversight will be provided by a Project Steering Committee (PSC), comprising representatives from KASEAS, AKPMT (ASEAN-ROK Programme Management Team), the ASEAN Secretariat, SOM-ED (ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Education), and the ROK Mission to ASEAN. To ensure sustainability, KASEAS will collaborate with ASEAN University Network (AUN) and other partner institutions to institutionalize key activities, disseminate knowledge outputs, and foster follow-up collaboration beyond the project term.

Our Vision

The ASEAN-Korea Platform for Great Minds (AKPGM) seeks to advance a long-recognized yet underdeveloped objective within ASEAN-Korea studies: fostering deep, transnational academic collaboration among Southeast Asianists. By nurturing Southeast Asian Studies and advancing research on ASEAN-Korea relations as vibrant fields of inquiry, AKPGM aspires to establish a sustainable platform for knowledge exchange and a dynamic intellectual community across borders.

Our Goals

AKPGM is designed with three primary goals:

Nurture the future generation of Southeast Asianists through research grants and fieldwork support.
Facilitate intellectual connectivity by building platforms for exchange, workshops, and academic conferences.
Establish a digital infrastructure to enable long-term collaboration among researchers post-project.