About the series

Against the backdrop of the ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on Upholding Multilateralism signed at the 2021 ASEAN Summit, this RSIS Webinar Series will take stock of regional and global international multilateral organisations in 2022 and assess how they have been affected by nearly two years of pandemic amid other grave uncertainties and geopolitical shifts. Looking at multilateralism globally across major regions of the world, experts will investigate how regions have multilaterally responded to the crisis, what new issues are emerging, and what lessons ASEAN might learn from other regions/regional organisations’ experiences and vice versa. Furthermore, regions may need to be working alongside each other for hopes of global recovery.

Conventional wisdom has it that multilateral initiatives are strongest when they build upon existing interactions to deepen and institutionalise them. To this end, this webinar series will explore both general questions on multilateral cooperation and inter-regional learning, as well as more specific ones addressing the pandemic, post-pandemic recovery, political tensions, and a priority agenda for multilateralism in 2022.

About the Panellists

Igor Driesmans has served as the EU Ambassador to ASEAN since 2019. He was previously a Member of the Cabinet of Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European Commission. His responsibilities included Asia and Pacific, Cultural Diplomacy, Transport and Fisheries. He previously served as Principal Assistant to the Chief Operating Officer of the European External Action Service (2014), Desk Officer for ASEAN (2013-2014), and Deputy Head of the Political, Economic, Trade and Information Section of the EU Delegation to South Africa (2009-2013). Ambassador Igor Driesmans has been an official of the EU since 2003. He holds a Masters in History from, University of Gent (Belgium).

Kathryn Nash is a Chancellor’s Fellow in the University of Edinburgh Law School. Previously she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Political Settlements Research Program. She received her PhD in Politics and International Studies from SOAS University of London, and her research interests include global governance, the role of regional organizations in responding to complex crises, and peace and security. Her book – African Peace: Regional Norms from the Organization of African Unity to the African Union – was recently published by Manchester University Press.

Giovanni Agostinis holds a Ph.D in Political Science, Sciences Po Paris (France) and IMT School for Advanced Studies (Italy), Master of Science in Latin American Studies, University of Oxford (UK), and Mphil and Bachelor in International Relations, University of Bologna (Italy).

His research agenda deals with regional governance processes and structures, with an emphasis on the comparative analysis of the institutional design and effects of regional organisations in Latin America. Currently, Giovanni is conducting a comparative research project on the drivers, modes, and effects of regional health governance in Latin America, Europe, and Africa.

Between 2013 and 2016, he was visiting researcher at FLACSO Argentina (Buenos Aires) and the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (Hamburg). Between 2010 and 2012, he worked as an analyst for the European External Action Service of the European Union in Brussels and Lima.