Our institute

In 1997 The Griffith Asia Pacific Council (GAPC) was launched as a means of taking Griffith University’s Asia Pacific engagement to a further stage. It was not a research centre then, but an advisory body established to oversee and coordinate Griffith’s Asia activities. It was funded directly by the Vice-Chancellor.

Its establishment was partly a means of publicly reaffirming the University’s long-held commitment to the study of and general engagement with Asia in the context of the disappearance of the Faculty of Asian and International Studies in the 1997 University restructure. As well, GAPC’s establishment was an attempt by the University to come to terms with the fact that its Asia Pacific-related work and activities were no longer limited just to a single Faculty or School, but increasingly went across many disciplines and areas of the University as a whole. The GAPC was placed administratively in the Vice-Chancellor’s office as a sign of its importance to the University, and also to signal the fact that the GAPC was meant to be a University-wide activity that sought both to strengthen and better coordinate the University’s capacities concerning the Asia-Pacific.

The second was the range of activities of the Director, which included efforts to broaden and “mainstream” the study of Asia across relevant areas of the University’s curriculum, to organise high-profile conferences and public lectures relating to the Asia Pacific region and Australia’s relations with it, to publicise the University’s capacities and achievements in Asia Pacific work, to develop cross-Faculty research activities focused on the Asia Pacific (including a weekly research seminar series), and generally to coordinate and facilitate, as appropriate, the University’s activities and work related to the Asia Pacific.

In 2001 as part of GAPC's review, it was recommended that GAPC be consolidated into a research institute. This became the Griffith Asia Pacific Research Institute (GAPRI) and incorporated the Centre for the Study of Australia-Asia Relations (CSAAR), the Australian Centre for Korean Studies and the Asia Pacific Spatial Database Project. Bodies such as CSAAR operated from the late 1970s (CSAAR 1978). In 2003 GAPRI applied for recognition under the University's research policy as a category A research institute. In November 2004 the name was changed from GAPRI to Griffith Asia Institute (GAI) to reflect a new strategic direction.