This is the year of paradoxes. Everything has changed and maybe nothing has altered. The impossible is easy, the familiar impossible. Taboos become normal conduct, as the taken-for-granted slips away.

This edition of the PIMA Bulletin is guest-edited by researchers at RMIT University, Australia, and presents a snapshot of work being undertaken by members and associates of the European Union-funded Jean Monnet Network, which is based in the European Union Centre of Excellence at RMIT University. The Jean Monnet Network brings together researchers from the University of Glasgow, Australian National University, Nanyang Technical University in Singapore and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, policy think-tanks and Non-Government Organisations who share a primary interest in enhancing the contribution of the European Union to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Asia Pacific.

This Issue of the PIMA Bulletin, Number 27, carries forward themes started in recent issues: the Climate Crisis and the recent PIMA Webinar; our special interest group topics of Later Life Learning, and Sustainable Development, also a 2019 strand on ALE anniversaries, ‘looking back to go forward better’; an anthology of other News and Views from members, and a welcome to the latest new members from three continents in our steady inward flow. Note in particular the PIMA ‘hot centre’ at venerable Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Can we see our way to nurturing other such sites elsewhere which purposefully share information and support tomorrow’s leadership?

The PIMA Bulletin Number 22 for January 2019 can now be read in full below.

The crisis in Western democracy was an early attempt in PASCAL via the OTB (thinking outside the box) Observatory website facility, to promote discussion of the way that assaults on democracy (not only ‘western’) might be confronted. What is the response that lifelong learning (LLL) and its encompassing moral and political values might have to offer in reviving active democratic practice?