Professor Sven Schottmann

Overview

Professor Sven Alexander Schottmann is Associate Dean (Development and Partnerships) in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of International Politics in the School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences. He joined Ulster University in 2023, and was previously Director and Principal of Curtin College in Perth, Western Australia.

Sven obtained his degree in International Studies from DePaul University in Chicago in 2001, completed a Master of Asian Politics as the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 2003, and was awarded his PhD from Monash University in Melbourne in 2009.

Sven is interested in contemporary Southeast Asian politics and society, as well as the wider Indian Ocean littoral as a realm of imaginative and creative exchange. He has been involved in research grants totalling over £ 2.6m from the Australian Research Council, the Australian UNESCO commission, the Ministry of Education in Singapore, the National Council of Professors in Malaysia and others.

He was the inaugural recipient of the Malaysian government’s Mahathir Distinguished Fellowship Program in 2013, and has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the National University of Malaysia as well as the Royal Dutch Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden.

Born in Hong Kong to parents from Hamburg, Sven grew up in Germany, Singapore and Malaysia. He speaks five languages, and passionate about international education, in particular the role which universities can play in transforming individual lives and entire communities.