UGM Graduate School organized The 11th International Graduate Students and Scholars’ Conference in Indonesia (IGSSCI) during 24-25 March 2021. The theme raised this time was entitled Culture, Technology, Social Transformation in the Quest for Human Dignity.
“In line with the new paradigm as World Class University, UGM Graduate School organized the annual IGSSCI as a medium publication of international student,” explained the Dean of UGM Graduate School, Prof. Ir. Siti Malkhamah, M. Sc., Ph.D., on Wednesday (24/3).
She then revealed the goal from these activities for academicians, researchers, Graduate School practitioners to share knowledge and information in the field of social and technical sciences widely. In its implementation, the Chairman of IGSSCI, Dicky Sofjan, Ph.D., revealed 150 abstracts were 150 submitted in this IGSSCI. There were also a hundred speakers from seven countries. The first day beginning, Philips Vermonte, as a Central Executive Director for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), started the discussion entitled, “Covid-19 and Us: The Changes in our Culture, Technology, and Society in the Time of Pandemic and Beyond”. This topic revealed that pandemic was inevitable for all of us. He appraised that there were two irony points learned from this condition. First, the advanced technology made tremendous development in transportation, which at the same time made people easier to migrate from one place to another rapidly.
“Humans can easily move from one place to another, which was considered beneficial back then. In our current condition, our uncontrolled movement could become a significant enabling factor in the virus transmission,” he said.
Covid pandemic has made several parties re-think the relevance between the government system and its agility in handling pandemic. There was an assumption that stated the democratic state was more effective in handling pandemic inherently. As a matter of fact, a state with a democratic system is a service, responsive, protective-oriented to its citizens. Otherwise, solving the pandemic will be a huge challenge for some non-democratic countries.
“However, non-democratic countries had challenged this old assumption. Based on the indicator performance of the state in the last 12 months, surprisingly, they can also overcome pandemic effectively,” he added.
After the opening session, there was also an IGSSCI plenary meeting that discussed “Heartware, Culture, and Ecological Crisis” by three speakers: Maharani Hapsari, Ph.D. from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Assoc. Professor Zeeda Muhammad from the University of Malaya, and Fackhruddin Majeri Mangunjaya, Ph.D. from the National University, followed by two parallel sessions and a second plenary session.
Author: Gloria