Mr Earl Drake, IAR Honorary Professor and former Canadian Ambassador to Indonesia, will be delivering a Public Lecture on Gayatri Rajapatni, the queen consort of Majapahit’s founder and first king Kertarajasa Jayawardhana, and also the mother of Tribhuwana Wijayatunggadewi, the queen regnal of Majapahit. Mr Drake asserts that Gayatri’s contributions have been forgotten by posterity, and she should now be recognized as a national heroine. The Lecture will be moderated by Dr Thomas Hunter, CSEAR Management Committee member and UBC lecturer of Sanskrit and Indonesian studies.
Speaker Bio
After obtaining an MA in history, he joined th Canadian Foreign Service and gradually rose from junior diplomatic positions in Karachi and Kuala Lumpur to Ambassador in Jakarta and Beijing. As well, he served as a senior Canadian representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and the World Bank in Washington, DC. Interspersed with his overseas postings were senior positions in Ottawa as Assistant Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-President in the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).
He is now retired in Vancouver where he is Honorary Professor in Residence at the Institute of Asisan Research at UBC. He has published his memoirs, A Stubble Jumper in Striped Pants: Memoirs of a Prairie Diplomat (University of Toronto Press, 1999) and Gayatri Rajapatni: Perempuan di Balik Kejayaan Majapahit (Yogyakarta, Ombak 2012). His first published book was Regina The Queen City [McClelland & Stewart, 1955].
Afternoon tea and refreshments will be provided.
RSVP here.
View PDF Poster here.
Sponsor: Centre for Southeast Asian Research
By: Earl Drake, IAR Honorary Professor and former Canadian Ambassador to Indonesia
Type: Discussion
