Save the Date: AAS-in-Asia 2019

The Association for Asian Studies is pleased to announce that the next AAS-in-Asia conference will be held in Bangkok, Thailand on July 1-4, 2019 at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel along the banks of the Chao Phraya River. Please mark these dates on your calendar. The Call for Proposals will open in early September, and the deadline for panel proposals will be late October. As with previous AAS-in-Asia conferences, the program committee will consider only proposals for organized panels or roundtable discussions. Individual paper proposals will not be accepted.

The AAS-in Asia conferences offer opportunities for Asia-based scholars to interact with each other and their international colleagues. AAS is partnering with a five-university coalition of organizers led by Thammasat University; the other members of the coalition are Chiang Mai, Chulalongkorn, Kasetsart, and Mahidol Universities. In terms of travel, tourism, and obtaining necessary visa documents, Bangkok is known as an easily accessible hub in Southeast Asia.

As the recent controversy over the AAS-in-Asia held in Delhi, India, makes clear, AAS is encountering challenges in determining venues for international academic conferences, ranging from finding host institutions with faculty and staff willing to take on the significant workload involved in organizing a conference with some 1,000 attendees, to facing the risk of becoming ensnared in the politics of governments in the countries in which the host institutions are located. The U.S. government itself has issued new regulations regarding visa applications from citizens of Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Although Thais remain hopeful that their country will have elections (current news reports are suggesting the possibility of early 2019), Thailand currently is ruled by a military junta. Nonetheless, our host partners affirm that holding the AAS-in-Asia conference in Thailand provides support for free academic inquiry in their country. In this spirit, the AAS Board of Directors voted in October 2017 to hold the 2019 AAS-in-Asia conference in partnership with this coalition of Thai universities.

We will post periodic updates about the conference at the AAS website and on the association’s Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Posted on behalf of the AAS Board of Directors