Evan Lau is a Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). Throughout his career at UNIMAS, he has held several pivotal leadership roles, including Deputy Dean for Research and Postgraduate, Director of the Centre for Business, Economics and Finance Forecasting (BEFfore), and Head of Strategy. He currently serves as the Deputy Dean of Research and Commercialization. Internationally recognized for his scholarly work, Evan has held visiting positions at prestigious institutions such as the University of Cambridge and several universities in Indonesia. He was twice selected for Indonesia’s World Class Professor (WCP) program by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2020 and 2021, and in May 2021, he was appointed as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Central Bank of Malaysia. He has received numerous awards for research excellence, including the UNIMAS Young Researcher Award, Excellent Service Award, and accolades for best papers and high-impact publications. As an experienced academic mentor, he has supervised many postgraduate and undergraduate research projects. His contributions have earned him recognition among the top 9% of economists in Malaysia and ASEAN, and the top 10% in Asia by the RePEc network. He is also one of the most highly cited authors at UNIMAS. Beyond academia, Evan enjoys running and travelling. His dedication to research, academic leadership, and mentorship continues to make a meaningful and lasting impact in higher education.Weng Marc Lim is a Distinguished Professor and the Dean of Sunway Business School at Sunway University, an ASU-Cintana Alliance Global Partner Affiliate Faculty at Arizona State University in the United States of America, and an Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia and Sungkyunkwan University in the Republic of Korea. Professor Lim is the Record Holder for “Youngest Professor” in the Malaysia Book of Records and features in the Academy of Sciences Malaysia’s Top Research Scientists Malaysia and JCI’s Ten Outstanding Young Malaysians. With over 100 publications in prestigious “A*” and “A” ranked journals, Professor Lim’s research has been cited more than 30,000 times. As a thought leader, Professor Lim has led high-level discussions at AppliedHE, Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), Association of MBAs (AMBA), Business Graduates Association (BGA), Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), Times Higher Education (THE), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Principles of Responsible Management Education (UNPRME), and World Economic Forum (WEF). Professor Lim holds a Bachelor of Business and Commerce with First Class Honors and a Doctor of Philosophy from Monash University, and multiple certificates post-PhD, including a Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (Higher Education) with High Distinction from Swinburne University of Technology and a Certificate in School Management and Leadership from Harvard University.Huey Fen Cheong is a Senior Lecturer at Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. Her interests have been multidisciplinary, mainly linguistics, sociology, education, marketing, and psychology. Driven by a cultural and postcolonial perspective, she collaborated with a group of established scholars to initiate this Futures of Asia series (which contains this book) and the earlier COVID-19 in Malaysia series. These initiatives aim to promote Global South research and publications, especially on significant events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, post-pandemic normality and transformations, and the rise of AI, which equally matter to non-Western regions and deserve equal scholarly attention (and acceptance) beyond Western-centric frameworks in academia.
