Faculty of Geography Universitas Gadjah Mada strives to develop strategic partnerships with various universities abroad in support of Universitas Gadjah Mada to World Class Research. On Monday 13 March 2017, Guest Lecture held at the Geography Faculty of UGM with speaker Prof. Dr. Farhat Yusuf. Guest Lecture was attended by more than 100 participants consisting of lecturers, staff, Undergraduate (S1), Master program (S2) and Doctoral program (S3) students of Geography Faculty of UGM. Prof. Dr. Farhat Yusuf theme is: Demography of ethnic minorities in China. Professor Farhat Yusuf is associated with the Menzies Centre for Health Policy and the China Study Centre at the University of Sydney. He is also an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at Macquarie University. He first visited China in 1975 where he met the famous Chinese social scientist (late) Professor Fei Hsiao-Tung who got him interested in the study of ethnic minorities. Since then Professor Yusuf has visited China on numerous occasions to attend conferences and other professional meetings. He has travelled extensively within China particularly during his numerous assignments as a UNFPA/UNDP consultant for the evaluation of various population programs. In 2006 he spent part of his sabbatical leave as a Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
The theme of this program, which was opened by Prof. Dr. Muh Aris Marfai, M.Sc, the Dean of Geography Faculty UGM, was the development of population studies with diverse social, cultural, religious and linguistic backgrounds as focal points. This theme has been an important topic since demography studies development becomes the global issue especially in minor and major Muslim countries. This program was intended to address the issues related to the influence of human geographical factors on the Muslim region areas of which proposed solutions and new insights will be used as the basis for the population monitoring of the minority and/or majority Muslim country problems. In this program, there was also some discussion of the form of academic and research cooperation as well as the potential future Human Geography research.