Paris, 13-14 February 2020: ERIA, represented by Dr Giulia Ajmone Marsan, was invited to participate in the second OECD expert group on higher education institutions and innovation eco-systems. The expert group discussion was organised under the OECD-EC HEInnovate Initiative (https://www.oecd.org/industry/smes/heinnovate.htm).

Experts from Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia met in Paris to discuss future trends of higher education systems and implications for the new geography of innovation. A number of issues emerged from the discussion:

• The development of new higher education approaches needs to be considered in the context of complex, multi-level governance at different levels, not by a single ministry acting in silos from the top down;
• Any analysis and policy prescriptions will need to recognise widely variant legal opportunities and challenges;
• The UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a robust and policy driven performance framework to assess the impact of higher education institutions on their communities. Greater levels of public and community engagement are needed to drive ‘demand pull’ and the grand societal challenges;
• It is important to adopt a broad understanding of knowledge exchange activities that goes beyond knowledge transfer between universities and the business sector.

The issues discussed at the workshop are highly relevant for ASEAN Member States as many countries within ASEAN and East Asia are currently reflecting on how to improve higher education systems and develop new skills strategies to meet the challenges caused by- and make the most of- the opportunities arising from the digital revolution and the knowledge economy.

 Experts that participated in the workshop included, Raffaele Trapasso (Leader of the HEInnovate Initiative, OECD), Kevin Richardson (UK Research and Innovation), Louise Kempton (University of Newcastle, UK), Fumi Kitagawa (Edinburgh Business School, UK), Slavica Singer (UNESCO Chair and University of Osijek, Croatia), Andres Rodriguez Pose (London School of Economics, UK), Charles Wessner, Daniele Livon (General Director, Agency for the Evaluation of the Italian University System and Research), John Edwards (European Commission Joint Research Center-Seville).

 Dr Ajmone Marsan also participated in the conference: East Asia Security in Flux. What Regional Order Ahead?  hosted by the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI) and co-organised by IFRI and RIPS (Research Institute for Peace and Security, a leading Japanese think tank). Organisers and invited participants included: Dr Françoise Nicolas, Director, Center for Asian Studies, Ifri; Dr Céline Pajon, Head of Japan Research, Center for Asian Studies, Ifri;  President Masashi Nishihara, President, Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS); Dr Niklas Swanstrom, Director of the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm, Sweden; Ambassador Barry Desker, Distinguished Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and ERIA Governing Board from Singapore. Ambassador Barry Desker gave a public keynote speech with the title: From East Asia to Indo-Pacific: Strategic Risks, Power Shift and New Order in the Making.  

 In addition to the above mentioned events, Dr Ajmone Marsan met relevant OECD colleagues to discuss potential future collaboration on a number of themes of importance for ERIA and gave two lectures at SciencesPo, Paris.

The Geography of Higher Education.pdf