The 2nd National and the 3rd International KU Social Sciences Conference 2025
Kasetsart University, Bangkok | 29 August 2025
Roundtable Discussion
It was a great pleasure to be invited to participate in this roundtable discussion at Kasetsart University. Rather than structuring my contribution around simplified frameworks or slogans, I chose to step back and reflect more broadly on the meaning, purpose, and responsibility of the social sciences—particularly in relation to sustainability and development.
At their core, the social sciences provide critical ways of understanding societies, social relations, inequalities, and pathways towards sustainable change. They equip us with analytical tools to question assumptions, interrogate structures, and examine how power operates within and across societies. Through this lens, social sciences enable us not only to diagnose problems, but also to design responses that address challenges at both local and global levels.
As an academic working across politics, international relations, and international development, my approach is inherently interdisciplinary. This interdisciplinarity allows me to move beyond theory alone and engage directly with practice. Academic work, I argue, should not be limited to conceptualisation or theorisation; it must ensure that ideas and frameworks are translated into meaningful and socially relevant action. The practices we develop must remain closely connected to the political, social, and economic problems shaping contemporary societies.
Development studies, in particular, are concerned with identifying structural challenges, understanding the analytical frameworks through which they are interpreted, and proposing viable solutions. In this sense, the social sciences must remain solution-oriented—especially when responding to complex global challenges such as those articulated in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This commitment to bridging theory and practice led me to establish an extracurricular initiative in 2016, which later developed into the Democratic Education Network (DEN). DEN was created to move beyond academic abstraction by embedding care, co-creation, and collaborative planning into educational practice. Central to this model is the active involvement of students—not as passive recipients of knowledge, but as co-producers of learning, research, and social engagement.
The challenges we face today are no longer confined to local contexts. Globalisation has long blurred these boundaries. Although I work in London, the issues we engage with—inequality, sustainability, governance, and development—are inherently global. Education must therefore reflect this reality by connecting classrooms to communities, and universities to global partners and international organisations.
DEN was developed precisely to create these connections. It operates by building bridges between academia and society, between students and communities, and across international contexts. Over the years, we have established sustained collaborations linking London with Thailand, Vietnam, and other parts of the world. Importantly, these initiatives are not imposed from above. Instead, students are entrusted with responsibility, encouraged to take ownership, and supported in developing both inputs and outputs that generate tangible social and academic impact.
The social sciences, therefore, should be understood as inherently multidisciplinary. Within DEN, students from politics, international relations, psychology, and medical sciences collaborate around shared concerns. What unites them is not disciplinary identity, but a commitment to addressing real-world problems both within and beyond educational spaces.
Our collaboration with Kasetsart University offers a clear example of this approach in practice. Over the past five years, Kasetsart students have participated in international student conferences in London, contributed to online publications, and co-authored academic book chapters. These outcomes demonstrate the capacity of students to engage meaningfully in knowledge production when given the opportunity, trust, and institutional support.
For such collaborations to be sustained, universities must recognise and invest in students’ energy, creativity, and capacity. Students should be continually involved in the processes through which education, research, and engagement are produced. While methodology is important—and something I would be happy to elaborate on—it is ultimately the values of collaboration, care, and shared responsibility that underpin this work.
If given just two minutes with a university president or dean, my message would be simple: transformative education can begin with small, well-supported initiatives that scale through demonstrated success. DEN’s recognition as a finalist for the Green Gown Awards in the UK and Ireland, alongside its earlier recognition as one of the UK’s leading sustainability projects, provides clear evidence that such models can deliver meaningful impact.
Ultimately, what matters is not only whether these approaches are translated into policy, but whether universities genuinely commit to fostering caring, collaborative, and capacity-building relationships between students and academic staff. This, in my view, is where meaningful and sustainable educational transformation truly begins.
