School of Architecture and Design at Walailak University has initiated the academic collaboration with international institutes since 2018.  The first was with School of Art and Design, Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in New Zealand.  We organized an international workshop in the theme of “The Way We Work (on the Fourth Industrial Revolution – 4IR)” and Prof.Dr.Thomas Mical (Professor of Architectural Theory) gave a special lecture and comments on several proposals.  In academic year of 2019, the school had an internship student from Jiangxi University of Science and Technology at Ganzhou in China.  Mr.Baizi Shen (Jason) attained the exchange program and took many classes with our architecture and design students.  Then, during the current situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, our school has adapted activities by using on-line technology.  We managed the event of an international workshop in the theme of “Automation for Daily Living” with Jindal School of Art and Architecture (JSAA), O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) in India and invited Prof.Dr.Thomas Mical acting as the dean of the school during his Sabbatical Leave to participate.

          This year of 2021, as we were still locked down with Covid-19 pandemic, has organized various programs and activities via ZOOM application for our international collaboration.  The program was generated by Centre for International Affairs – CIA of Walailak University, including International Workshop, Staff Mobility, and International Symposium.

          1. International Workshop: our collaborative workshop was with Jindal School of Art and Architecture (JSAA) in India and Faculty of Architecture, Kindai University in Japan, in the theme of “Eating Matter”(in the situation of pandemic). We invited two special guests – Prof.Dr.Thomas Mical and Mr.Keisuke Ikegaya as our panel of juries.

          2. Staff Mobility: the online lectures by visiting lecturers from abroad. Architecture students had a few lessons on vernacular architecture from Dr.Pham Manh Hung and Dr.Le Ngoc Van Anh of Faculty of Architecture, University of Science, Hue University, Vietnam. For interior students, Dr.Nikhil Joshi from Department of Architecture (DOA), School of Design and Environment (SDE), National University of Singapore (NUS) was invited to give a lecture on the integration of art and culture, and Mr.Chen Gong from School of Arts and Humanities, Guangxi Arts University (GAU) in China, about interior design.

         3. International Symposium: the school initiated the A.D. International Symposium 2021 as our first collaborative network on presenting academic articles with Faculty of Architecture, Kindai University. We invited Assoc.Prof.Seiji Terakana as a keynote speaker, and then worked as our co-author for a collaboration in publishing paper.