[CALS] CAUPLI Inaugural Reciprocal Workshop Opening Ceremony

The Centre for Asian Legal Studies (CALS) at the National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law, and Universitas Gadjah Mada Fakultas Hukum (UGM) formally kickstarted their inaugural reciprocal workshop, organised and run by law students from UGM for Singaporean law students, under the recently launched CALS-UGM Peer Learning Initiative (CAUPLI) – An Introduction to the Basics of Indonesian Company Law.

The opening ceremony for CAUPLI’s reciprocal workshop was held on Saturday, 7 September 2024, and saw NUS Law and UGM Law professors and students coming together virtually to celebrate the inaugural reciprocal workshop’s launch. Associate Professor Adrianto Dwi Nugroho, Vice Dean of UGM Law, noted that CAUPLI was a unique opportunity that UGM was eager to embark on. Expressing his hopes that CAUPLI “will strengthen the relationships between the schools and foster longstanding friendships between the students which could be beneficial for practice in the future”.

Assistant Professor Dian Shah, Deputy Director of CALS, found CAUPLI to be an invigorating opportunity for students’ learning of civil law which the legal fraternity has pushed for with much enthusiasm. She observed that “the project helps to expand [the] comparative knowledge of students regarding other jurisdictions” and because “Indonesia is important to the region … it would be valuable to learn about the prevailing legal culture and norms there”.

Indeed, students at both NUS and UGM have put in months of hard work in conceptualising the workshop, preparing the materials and are excited for the commencement of the reciprocal lectures. Nicholas Aurelius Karosta, Project Director of CAUPLI (UGM), found the benefits of this project “very real”. In this regard, he noted that CAUPLI is a “one-of-a-kind opportunity to collaborate with one another that [UGM Law students will not] find in [their] everyday classes”. He added that such an opportunity “enables students from UGM to connect with other students from other regions, share ideas and forge lifelong friendships”.

Ayrton McCully, Project Director of CAUPLI (NUS), echoed the same sentiment that “both Indonesia and Singapore hold a rich tradition of learning, with unique cultural perspectives that contribute to the global, legal academic community”. Through CAUPLI, he continued, “we aim to bridge our intellectual strengths, foster new ideas, and inspire collaborative solutions to the challenges we face in today’s fast-evolving world”.

A further workshop, titled ‘An Introduction to the Basics of Singapore Company Law’, organised by CAUPLI will take place at the end of September. It will be held in-person at UGM Law for law students in the Special Region of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This is no doubt an exciting time for CAUPLI, and both CALS and UGM are excited about the heights that this project will achieve!

For more information on CAUPLI, please visit: https://law.nus.edu.sg/cals/cals-ugm-peer-learning-initiative/.