From Bollywood films to a discussion of the survival of Pakistan, Asia Pacific Week 2008 was a veritable smorgasbord of scholarly pursuits.

The event, based around the theme of ‘Building Australia’s Asia Pacific Expertise’, included a series of graduate summer schools focusing on Japan, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, East Timor, the Pacific Islands and South Asia as well as a range of cross-area workshops and public events.

Asia Pacific Week is not your traditional conference, according to Convenor Dr Luigi Tomba. “It’s a free and unique way of producing a network of young scholars,” he said. “It’s also a way of developing skills and tools for research and of producing the expertise essential to the Australian capacity to understand the region.”

Among the public events were an exhibition of traditional designs on Tongan tapu cloth, a discussion of Goddesses in Tamil cinema, roundtable on the survival of Pakistan and a lecture by Professor Geremie Barme on Beijing and preparations for the 2008 Olympics.

Geremie set out to contemplate the realignment of the city of Beijing from the early years to the 20th Century up until its recent remodelling as an international megapolis. “The realignment of Beijing has been as much physical – as the axis of the city was changed twice in the space of 50 years – as it is political and cultural,” he said.

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