Ever since Chinese President Xi Jinping came into power in 2012, the Chinese state has restored the significance of neighborhood diplomacy as a cornerstone of China’s international relations regime. China has actively engaged with Asian countries through sociocultural, political, and economic relations. Following renowned anthropologist James Ferguson’s conception of place-in-the-world, we use China-in-Asia to reveal China’s geographic location in Asia and a rank in a system of sociocultural, economic, and political categories.

The Department of Geography at the University of Oregon plans to organize a workshop on “China-In-Asia: Historical Connections and Contemporary Engagement,” which will be held in Eugene, OR, on 24-25 April 2020. This China-in-Asia workshop attempts to explore China’s engagement with Asian countries, historically and contemporarily, and to establish a multidisciplinary platform for in-depth constructive dialogue among scholars from various social science disciplines who are interested in expanding discussions of the changing relation between China and the Asian formation. Participants will compare and contrast empirical data and research findings to portray a comprehensive spectrum of China’s engagement with Asia. Through comparison and contrast, we can thus transcend the territorial fixities of area-studies research without discounting the significance of contextually grounded, place-based knowledge. We invite participation from scholars working on, but not limited to, such topics as:

• Border politics and cross-border networks;
• Cultural diffusion and the transformation of culture;
• The dynamics of Asian production networks;
• Transnational agribusiness and the politics of land;
• Investment and knowledge mobilities;
• Immigration and labor relations;
• International relations and China’s neighborhood diplomacy;
• The Belt and Road Initiatives in Asia

Abstracts of maximum 250 words should be sent to Associate Professor Xiaobo Su (email: xiaobo@uoregon.edu) by 31 December 2019. Please also include 1) Name; 2) Institutional affiliation; 3) Title/position; 4) E-mail address. Accepted presenters will receive notification by email by 15 January 2020. There is no registration fee. The deadline for full papers is 31 March 2020. Each presenter has 30 minutes to present research findings and another 10 minutes for further discussion with other attendants.

From May 13-15, 2020, the University of Utrecht, the University of Göttingen and the Volkswagen Foundation will be hosting a Herrenhausen Conference on “China and Europe on the New Silk Road: Connecting Universities” in Hanover, Germany. The conference will mark the conclusions of a multi-year research project on the implications of the New Silk Road (or China´s One Belt One Road initiative) for higher education and research in different parts of the world.

Recent geopolitical events such as Brexit, and the US turning its back on international trade and cooperation, create waves of uncertainty in higher education regarding international cooperation, the free movement of students, academics, scientific knowledge, and ideas. Meanwhile China stands to gain as its universities advance in global visibility. The growing unpredictabilities in the West may make China only more successful in its aim to attract talent (back) and to enhance its impact on the global higher education landscape. Its New Silk Road (or One Belt One Road) project could potentially span and integrate major parts of the world across the Euro-Asian continents. But likely on new and different conditions, also for higher education.

The conference will discuss the changing academic relations between China and other countries in Asia and Europe. Key questions focus on flows and patterns of academic mobility along the New Silk Road. It also investigates initiatives undertaken by universities as well as the conditions under which these are taking place. It aims at discussing the impact of these developments on EU-China collaborations, on the global higher education landscape, the key role of the US therein, and on how academic systems between China and Europe will position themselves.

Researchers and professionals from business and administration as well as NGOs with a link to the New Silk Road and higher education from all fields are welcome to attend the symposium.

For more information or registration, view our website “www.academicsilkroad.org”.

Event website

From May 13 till 15, 2020, Utrecht University and the Georg-August-University of Göttingen will host an international conference on “China and Europe on the New Silk Road: Connecting Universities”. This conference is supported by Volkswagen Foundation, and it entails a pre-conference workshop for junior scholars on May 13, 2020.
The international conference will mark the conclusions of a multi-year research project exploring the implications of the “New Silk Road” (or China’s “One Belt One Road” initiative) for higher education and research collaboration between China and Europe. Research outcomes will be presented by members of the project team and consequently discussed with a range of international experts, policy makers and leaders in the field. More information on the project and on the conference can be accessed at www.academicsilkroad.org.
Three international travel fellowships are available for junior scholars who would like to attend the workshop. The stipends will cover all international/national travel and accommodation expenses (to Hanover, Germany).

Event website

Proposal Deadline: December 15, 2019

Registration Deadline: April 10, 2020

Event website

Proposal Application Deadline: Monday, September 30, 2019

Registration Deadline:  April 30, 2020

Event website

The early submission deadline is on December 31, 2019. Early submission is intended mainly for international applicants who need a letter of invitation for visa purposes. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 31, 2020.

Regular submission deadline is on February 29, 2020. Notification of acceptance will be sent by March 31, 2020.

Event website

Penn State University invites applicants for its annual Global Asias Summer Institute, to be held June 15-19, 2020. This year’s Institute, co-directed by Laura Kina (DePaul University) and Chang Tan (Penn State), focuses on the geographical imagination of Global Asias through art and visual culture.

Institute participants spend a week reading and thinking about the annual theme, as well as significant time workshopping their work in progress. Particularly strong work will be considered for publication in an upcoming special issue on “Visualizing Asias” (issue 8.2) of the award-winning journal, Verge: Studies in Global Asias (https://www.upress.umn.edu/journal-division/journals/verge-studies-in-global-asias).

Penn State will cover housing and most meals, and offer an honorarium to help defray travel costs (USD 400 from the East Coast, 600 from the Midwest, 800 from the West Coast; USD 1000 from Europe; USD 1350 from Asia). Applicants must have completed their PhDs no earlier than June 2015, or be advanced graduate students who are completing their dissertations.

On the theme:

Maps traditionally function to draw territorial boundaries; assist with navigation; document physical geographies; and to visualize, render, and measure scientific data and “facts.” Art’s relationship to mapping foregrounds different goals such as documenting hidden histories and telling alternative narratives; standing in as a historical witness to resist revisionist history; functioning as a memorial to honor vanished spaces, places and peoples; challenging a viewer’s relationship to their environment and providing a new way of understanding their positionality; expressing symbolic form to convey impact and to document affect; and creating formats for collaboration and engagement. In other words, to envision Global Asias through art demands a leap of imagination that goes beyond and intervenes in the conventions and goals of representational cartography.

In the 2020 Global Asias Summer Institute, we explore the role of art and visual culture in the formation and revamping of the geographic imaginations of Asia and its diasporas, especially as such artistic production “overlaps a more tangible geography and helps shape our attitude to peoples and places” (Said, 1978). Specifically, how do art and visual culture document, decipher, and reinvent the haunted landscapes of war and migration and removal, the processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, the mapping of diaspora, or the emergence of alternative transpacifics? And how might artistic imagination and practice archive, dissemble, and interfere with the rapidly changing environments and habitats of the anthropocene, the glocal march of urbanization and gentrification, or the exploitation and injustice that accompanies the expropriation of land?

The institute aims to consider broadly the connections and tensions between the visual and the geographic in Asia and the Asian diaspora. We invite artists, curators, and scholars to address issues that include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How landscape, in myriad media and materiality, helps shape the imaginaries of the local, the national, the regional, and the global;
• Landscape’s vexed relationship to the sublime, manifest destiny, and settler-colonialism;
• Haunted landscapes, memories of war, affective space in art and visual culture;
• How land and its residents are conceived and visualized in the colonial and postcolonial context, tackling issues such as military occupation and deterritorialization;
• How the visual and the cartographic participate in discourses of land ownership, urban development, indigeneity, and boundaries;
• How art and visual cultures envision Oceanic conceptions of shared waterways to reflect real and imagined transpacific communities;
• Ecocriticism and eco-activism in the art and visual culture of Asia;
• Critical practices that trace displacement, movement, immigration and refugees;
• The politicization of aesthetics and the affective dimension of political activism.

To apply, please send the following documents to vergevents@psu.edu by March 6, 2020. Items #1-3 must be sent as a single PDF file; the recommendation letter for applications from advanced graduate students may be sent separately.

1. An abstract of 1500 words outlining research project and clarifying its connection to the Institute theme.
2. A sample of current work.
3. A current c.v. (no longer than 2 pp).
4. A letter from a principal advisor about the advanced status of work (in the case of graduate students).

Decisions will be made by April 3, 2020. Inquiries regarding the Summer Institute may be directed to Chang Tan (cut12@psu.edu) or the Global Asias Initiative (vergevents@psu.edu).

Proposal and registration deadline: February 28, 2020

Event website

The seventh annual AAS-in-Asia conference, co-hosted by the Association for Asian Studies and The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), will be held June 29-July 1, 2020 in Kobe, Japan.

Call for Proposals deadline: February 10, 2020

Event website

Proposal deadline: October 15, 2019

Event website

The American Political Science Association (APSA) is pleased to announce a Call for Applications for early-career scholars who would like to participate in the 2020 APSA Asia Pacific Workshop. The professional development and networking program is tentatively scheduled to take place from July 5-11 in partnership with City University of Hong Kong. Fellows will present and discuss research related to the theme “Contentious Politics and its Repercussions in Asia.” For more information visit: https://connect.apsanet.org/asia/2020-workshop/. Applications due Saturday, March 14, 2020.

Event website

Proposal Deadline: November 1, 2019

Registration Deadline: May 3, 2020

Event website

The American Association for Chinese Studies (AACS) annual conference program committee would like to invite proposals for panels, roundtables, and individual papers on issues concerning China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, other Chinese communities, and the Chinese diaspora for the 62nd Annual Conference, hosted by University of Denver in Denver, Colorado, October 2-4, 2020. The theme of the conference is “Schism in the Making? Diversities, Contradictions, and Reconciliation” in multiple aspects of culture, diplomacy, economy, education, health, history, literature, politics, and society. The AACS meeting seeks to offer a forum for interdisciplinary exchanges and policy dialogues. It intends to construct a balanced program with panels on diverse issues of significance for scholarly pursuit and knowledge advancement. Submissions from all disciplines are welcome. Please send your proposal by e-mail to aacssubmissions@gmail.com.

Event website