The University of California Los Angeles will open a facility in Bangkok in January 2012.
The office was supposed to open in October of this year but was delayed due to flooding. It will serve as a center of all UCLA social and academic programs in Thailand, said Randal Johnson, interim provost for international studies.
“We see this as setting up an infrastructure, in which anybody on campus who wants to work with Thailand or is doing some kind of collaborative research in Thailand or with Thai scholars can use the space,” Johnson told student paper The Daily Bruin. “The idea is to really shape that academic and research relationships between UCLA and our academic partners (in Thailand).”
The creation of the office was mainly coordinated by Kantathi Souphanouvong, the former minister of foreign affairs for Thailand under Thaksin Shinawatra and now a guest professor at UCLA. Kantathi said that the center will serve to further centralize coordination between UCLA and Thailand.
Los Angeles and Bangkok are already strong linked: LA has the largest Thai population outside of Thailand, estimated at 80,000 by the US Dept. of Commerce in 2004. There’s even a Thai Town neighborhood on Hollywood Boulevard, to the east of the famous Walk of Fame.
