Announcement

On behalf of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and Social Science Baha, we invite you to submit a proposal for the 2025 AAS-in-Asia Conference. The conference will take place June 1-4, 2025, at the Radisson Hotel area in the Lazimpat neighborhood of Kathmandu.

The Program Committee seeks organized panels and roundtable session proposals (no individual papers proposals) on all aspects of Asian Studies. The proposals are preferred but may not be limited to this year’s theme:

Reframing Global Asias: Margins, Modernities, and Mobilities

By far the largest geographic region in the world, “Asia,” as an idealized place, has long invited romanticized and globalizing visions. Some argue that, after 200 years of Western hegemony, the world stands at a historical juncture during which Asia will come to dominate global politics, economy, and culture, as well as knowledge production and circulation. The AAS-in-Asia meeting at Kathmandu in 2025 will highlight the tremendous vibrance and diversity of Asian Margins, Modernities, and Mobilities.

The region’s hyper-diversities can be lost in such a singularly envisaged Asia. For example, the discourse of the “Global City” has become synonymous with Asian modernity in which Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, and Ho Chi Minh City serve as templates for utopian blueprints of Asian Futures. This blueprint stands in stark contrast with the urban, rural, and in-between manifestations of other modernities. One such example is Nepal itself. Previously the cradle of Buddhism, a site to which pilgrims travelled from across Asia to seek spiritual blessing, today’s Nepal, with Kathmandu as its gateway and capital, welcomes mountain trekkers from around the world and also serves as a point of departure for young Nepalis whose modernities are understood and experienced through shifting spatial and social mobilities.

In selecting this year’s theme as “Reframing [Global] Asia[s]”, we expect that recentering the relational margins of urban and rural, while focusing on multiple Asian futures, will demonstrate Asia’s many pluralisms, contrasts, and paradoxes. The conference takes stock of these variegated “Margins, Modernities, and Mobilities” en route to taking up the critical and necessary task of “Reframing Asia”.

We look forward to your participation.The Program Committee of AAS-in-Asia 2025

All proposals must be submitted electronically via the AAS electronic submission application.

We will not accept proposals submitted via email.

The submission portal will be available from
Thursday, September 12, 2024, through Thursday, October 31, 2024.

After the submission deadline, your proposal will be forwarded to the program committee for review. If you have questions not answered in this Call for Proposals or the FAQs, please contact the AAS AASinAsia@asianstudies.org.

Organize | Submit