Asian Investment Conference 2023

Michael Vatikiotis is Senior Adviser at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Geneva-based private foundation that facilitates dialogue to resolve armed conflicts.
Based in Singapore, Mr. Vatikiotis is a regular broadcaster and contributor to the opinion page of several newspapers.

He has been a writer, broadcaster and journalist in Asia for more than 35 years. With family origins in the Middle East, he has lived in Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong.

Mr. Vatikiotis has written three books on Asian politics. The most recent, published in 2017, was Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia. The others are Indonesian Politics Under Suharto and Political Change in Southeast Asia.

His latest book is Lives Between the Lines: A Journey in Search of the Lost Levant, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2021. Mr. Vatikiotis has also written published fiction, including two novels set in Indonesia, The Spice Garden (2006) and The Painter of Lost Souls (2012).

Mr. Vatikiotis is a graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He earned his doctorate, which was on Thailand, from Oxford University, and also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Maryland. He is a member of the Asia Society’s International Council and speaks fluent Indonesian and Thai.