The Lost Art of Mingling: Cosmopolitanism and Pluralism in Asian Societies

Michael Vatikiotis in discussion with Chris Gunness, 7 July 2021, 14.00

Michael Vatikiotis looks at the forgotten pluralism that marked centuries of encounters between religious and ethnic groups and had its most complete modern manifestation in the Levant of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.

Michael is Asia Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and has a decade of experience working for the organisation as a private diplomat and conflict mediator. Prior to that he was a journalist in Asia for thirty years, living in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong.

A graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, Michael gained his doctorate from the University of Oxford and is a member of the Asia Society’s International Council. He has written three books on the politics of Southeast Asia, the latest being Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2017.

His forthcoming book, Lives Between the Lines: A Journey in Search of the Lost Levant, is due to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson on 6 August 2021