The 5th GPPN Conference in London
Conference Report
The 5th GPPN Conference was held at the London School of Economics (LSE) in London from 9-11 December 2011. About 100 students from the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs in New York (SIPA), the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore (LKY), the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin (Hertie), Sciences Po in Paris (SciencesPo) and the University of Tokyo in Tokyo(UT) participated in the Conference this year.
This report gives a brief account of the learnings from the GPPN Conference as a participant, as well as observations and suggestions from the perspective of an organizing committee member for UT.
Conference Content
The theme of this year's conference was “What is the state of our times? The changing shape of the nation-state in the 21st Century”. Participating students addressed and debated on issues related to the Conference theme through presentations made under the following sessions over the three days of conference, namely:
- Social Policy: ‘Doing more with less’(Session I and II),
- Financial Regulation: ‘Too important to fail?’,
- Economic Policy: ‘Can policy spur a return to dynamism?’,
- International Development: ‘How can we address the problem of weak states while maximizing the efficiency of foreign aid in the least developed countries?’
- Individual Presentations (Session I and II)
Overall, the Conference saw a good effort from the presenters and presentations were on the whole of reasonable substance.
As for UT, our presentations attempted to provide practical yet nontraditional solutions to the problems we addressed, which was well received by the judges and thus our winning of the best presentation for “Social Policy” (Haru Nishida, Reiko Yuasa and Mimi Suzuki) and “Individual Presentation”(Onyi Lam). For example the suggestion of a “homestay immersion programme” for new immigrants, the call for “flexibility mechanisms” in the Asian Pacific financial market and proposing NDC as the solution for pension reform etc, brought new, stimuluating ideas to the Conference. However, our students tend to be a little less confident in their presentations and we could improve on the presentation skills to engage the audience and make the presentation more interactive.
The Conference also invited guest judges from the LSE, academia and private sector to comment on the presentations and pick the best presentation of each respective session. Guest speakers were also invited to speak on Day 1 and Day 2.