About the GO-GN Asia-Pacific Hub

The GO-GN Asia-Pacific Hub is the regional hub of the Global Open Graduate Network (GO-GN) for the Asia-Pacific. It was established in 2025 as one of several pilot hubs funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, supporting GO-GN's work to expand the network through regional federation, build capacity across diverse member communities, and strengthen equity, diversity, and inclusion in open education research and practice.

At the heart of the Hub are doctoral researchers working on open education across the Asia-Pacific. The Hub supports their research, connects them with peers and mentors, and creates opportunities for them to share their work with a wider community of early-career researchers, academics, librarians, institutional leaders, and policymakers. In doing so, it links research with practice, policy, and collaboration on openness, with particular attention to countries and communities that are often underrepresented in global conversations about open education.

The Asia-Pacific is large, diverse, and highly connected. It is also a region where visibility and sustained collaboration across countries can be difficult to build. The Hub responds to this by working through trusted country partners, supporting locally led activity, and creating predictable regional touchpoints for exchange and capacity building.

What the Hub does. The Hub convenes regional and national activities, supports researchers at doctoral and early-career stages, and enables practical cooperation between institutions. Its programme combines national workshops, regional online events, and the annual Asia-Pacific Conference on Open Education (OpenAP), which serves as the Hub's flagship convening. 

Focus areas. The Hub's work covers open education, OER, and open pedagogy; open access, open research, and open data; policy implementation and institutional capability for openness; responsible AI in education, including AI-supported OER; equity and inclusion in open education research; and regional and international cooperation across the Asia-Pacific.

Guiding approach. The Hub works on a foundation-first model: convene, listen, build trust, and then scale collaboration through partnerships. Recognising that open education moves through institutions and infrastructure, not only individuals, it favours cross-sector participation, grounded implementation, shared leadership across countries, and careful treatment of emerging issues such as responsible AI in open education.

Administrative base and coordination. The Hub is coordinated from the University of Melbourne, Australia, led by Dr Vi Truong, in partnership with country co-leads and local host institutions across the region.

The whale. The Hub uses the whale as its symbol. It reflects the Asia-Pacific context of large, connected oceans and the way knowledge travels across borders. Whales also represent long-distance journeys and collective movement, which fits a hub that brings people and ideas together over time. The whale is a reminder that this work is about sustainability and care, not only scale.