PERTH – Monday, 30 July 2018. Mr Liam Prince has been appointed the new Consortium Director of the Australian Consortium for ‘In-Country’ Indonesian Studies (known as ACICIS Study Indonesia), Australia’s oldest and most successful university collaboration facilitating student mobility into Indonesia.

Speaking from Jakarta, Associate Professor David Bourchier, Chair of ACICIS’ Senior Appointments Subcommittee, said, “After an extensive external search over the past six months, it is a pleasure to announce that Mr Prince has accepted our offer to become the new ACICIS Consortium Director. Mr Prince will replace the inaugural Consortium Director – and ACICIS founder –   Professor David T. Hill AM who retires at the end of July.”

ACICIS is a non-profit international educational consortium of 26 universities that includes all of Australia’s Group of Eight. The consortium’s national secretariat is currently hosted by The University of Western Australia in Perth. In addition to the Secretariat and its staff in Australia, ACICIS currently employs more than 20 full-time staff in Indonesia in offices located in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Bogor and Bandung – working under the direction of the consortium’s Resident Director, Dr Adrian Budiman.

Mr Prince, a fluent Indonesian speaker, is a UWA graduate in Arts and Economics and an ACICIS alumnus. He has a range of experience working and studying in Indonesia. Since 2013, Mr Prince has served as the consortium’s Secretariat Manager, a role in which he has overseen an extraordinary period of growth in the scale of ACICIS’ activities. Student participation in the consortium’s programs in Indonesia has trebled since 2013, while the number of study options available to students has doubled – from eight programs in 2013 to 16 programs in 2018. This growth has been made possible, in large part, due to the consortium’s considerable success in securing financial support for student participation in its Indonesia-based programs through the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan.

Professor Bourchier praised Mr Prince’s strategic vision for ACICIS and his commitment to expanding the organisation. “Liam has been an extremely committed and energetic advocate for ACICIS and for building educational ties between Indonesia and Australia, over many years. His knowledge of the contemporary state of Australian outbound student mobility to Indonesia is second to none and I have every confidence in his ability to identify future opportunities to grow the number of Australian students studying in Indonesia annually.”

Outgoing Director, Professor Hill, who established ACICIS in 1994, welcomed the announcement. “I am delighted that Liam will be leading the consortium into its next phase. He is extremely well-versed in ACICIS’ history and its unique position within the Australian higher education sector – and within the broader Australia-Indonesia bilateral relationship. He has a clear vision for where ACICIS needs to go next in order to survive and thrive into its third decade.”

For his part, Mr Prince acknowledged the pioneering groundwork, the solid foundation, and the substantial legacy left behind by Professor Hill and the community of Indonesia-specialists who have built ACICIS over two-and-half decades into the successful national organisation that it is today. “I have a great love and respect for the history and culture of Indonesia-focused scholarship in Australia out of which ACICIS has grown,” said Mr Prince. “ACICIS will continue to play its national role as a lightning rod of enthusiasm for building durable two-way educational exchange between Australia and Indonesia – and as the repository of a generation’s worth of work in service of this goal.  As Consortium Director, I will do everything I can to preserve and build upon the best aspects of what continues to be a remarkable intergenerational project of educational diplomacy and cross-cultural engagement.”

In 2017 ACICIS placed 289 Australian and international students into study programs in Indonesian universities, and is on-track to exceed more than 400 students in 2018. It is the largest Indonesia-focussed study abroad consortium in Australia and the largest single recipient of New Colombo Plan student mobility funding.

ACICIS programs and activities are governed by a National Reference Group consisting of senior academic Indonesia-specialists and international student mobility professionals representing all Australian states and territories. There are more than 3000 alumni of ACICIS programs, many of whom now hold significant positions in government, academia and private enterprise. ACICIS alumni contribute to the Australia-Indonesia bilateral relationship in a myriad of ways, in a wide diversity of fields, well beyond their formative encounters with Indonesia as university students.

 

Click here for a PDF of the full media release.

 

For further media comment, please contact:

Meg McPherson
ACICIS Secretariat Officer
m.mcpherson@acicis.edu.au
+61 8 6488 6675