IAFOR > The Asian Conference on Asian Studies (ACAS) > ACAS2021

ACAS2021

ACAS2021

June 03-05, 2021 | Held online from Tokyo, Japan

ACAS is organised by IAFOR in association with the IAFOR Research Centre at the Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) in Osaka University, Japan.

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Conference Sponsor | Routledge

Routledge Logo Sponsor IAFOR Conference ACAS ACCS

Routledge Sponsor IAFOR Conference ACAS ACCS

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Programme

  • The Case of Jimmy Lai & The Rapid Loss of Freedom in Hong Kong
    The Case of Jimmy Lai & The Rapid Loss of Freedom in Hong Kong
    Keynote Presentation: Bradley J. Hamm
  • Sino-Japanese Relations: History, Martial Culture, Cross-cultural Exchanges and Interdisciplinary Research
    Sino-Japanese Relations: History, Martial Culture, Cross-cultural Exchanges and Interdisciplinary Research
    Featured Interview: Clementina Cardoso & Hing Chao
  • Selfless: Journeys through Identity and Social Class
    Selfless: Journeys through Identity and Social Class
    Featured Interview: Geoffrey Beattie
  • Doomed to Happen? The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games
    Doomed to Happen? The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games
    Featured Interview: Anoma van der Veere
  • Intercultural Strategies in High-Performance Environments: Observations from the Rugby World Cup 2019
    Intercultural Strategies in High-Performance Environments: Observations from the Rugby World Cup 2019
    Keynote Presentation: Sean O’Connell

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Speakers

  • Hing Chao
    Hing Chao
    Wah Kwong Maritime Transport Holdings, Hong Kong
  • Bradley J. Hamm
    Bradley J. Hamm
    Northwestern University, United States
  • Clementina Cardoso
    Clementina Cardoso
    CIHRC Research and Development, Hong Kong
  • Geoffrey Beattie
    Geoffrey Beattie
    Edge Hill University, United Kingdom
  • Anoma van der Veere
    Anoma van der Veere
    Leiden University, Netherlands
  • Sean O’Connell
    Sean O’Connell
    Nanzan University, Japan

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Organising Committee

  • Baden Offord
    Baden Offord
    Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia & Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    University of Rochester, United States
  • Sue Ballyn
    Sue Ballyn
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Seiko Yasumoto
    Seiko Yasumoto
    University of Sydney, Australia

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ACAS/ACCS2021 Review Committee

  • Dr Sara Abdoh, Faculty of Applied Arts, Benha University, Egypt
  • Dr Allan Basas, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines
  • Dr Chai Lee Lim, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College, China
  • Dr Hooi San Noew, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia
  • Dr Carmina Untalan, Osaka University, Japan
  • Dr Yuki Yokohama, Kanto Gakuin University, Japan
  • Dr Susan Bacud, University of the Philippines Los Banos, Philippines
  • Dr Benjamin Ireland, Texas Christian University, United States
  • Professor William Kunz, University of Washington Tacoma, United States
  • Dr Edem Peters, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria
  • Dr Anand Wadwekar, School of Planning and Architecture Bhopal, India
  • Dr Hui Xu, University of Perpetual Help System DALTA, Philippines

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IAFOR Academic Grant & Scholarship Recipients

Our warmest congratulations go to Yanjun Cai and Yuka Ito, who have been selected by the conference Organising Committee to receive grants and scholarships to present their research at ACAS/ACCS2021.

Yanjun Cai | IAFOR Scholarship Recipient

Photovoice in the Age of Social Media: Helping to Build Participation Needed for Urban Climate Resilience?
Yanjun Cai, Sun Yat-sen University, China

Dr Yanjun Cai is an Associate Research Fellow of the School of International Relations/Institute of Belt and Road Studies, at Sun Yat-sen University, China. Prior to that, Yanjun finished her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto, Canada. In 2017, Yanjun completed her PhD in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research centers on international development planning, community resilience, and nongovernmental governance, focusing on disadvantaged populations in Southeast Asia. Yanjun has worked with a number of universities, international organizations, and NGOs in the United States, Myanmar, Philippines, China, and Vietnam.

Yuka Ito | IAFOR Scholarship Recipient

“Intimacy” and Individuality: The Representation of Refugees in a World Not Ours
Yuka Ito, University of Tsukuba, Japan

Yuka Ito is a PhD student at University of Tsukuba.

IAFOR's grants and scholarships programme provides financial support to PhD students and early career academics, with the aim of helping them pursue research excellence and achieve their academic goals through interdisciplinary study and interaction. Awards are based on the appropriateness of the educational opportunity in relation to the applicant's field of study, financial need, and contributions to their community and to IAFOR's mission of interdisciplinarity. Scholarships are awarded based on availability of funds from IAFOR and vary with each conference.

Click here to find out more about IAFOR grants and scholarships.

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The Case of Jimmy Lai & The Rapid Loss of Freedom in Hong Kong
Keynote Presentation: Bradley J. Hamm

The case of imprisonment for billionaire and media leader Jimmy Lai reflects the extraordinary speed over the past two years in the loss of freedoms in Hong Kong. The July 1 national security law, along with other laws and restrictions, has changed Hong Kong from an open society to authoritarian rule in just months.

Hong Kong’s situation also will have significant impact on Asia, though we are still in the early stages of that effect.

Lai is a central figure in the fight to keep basic freedoms of speech, press and assembly. His Next Digital media company that includes Apple Daily newspaper is the leading opposition to the legal changes, including the destruction of the Sino-British Joint Declaration treaty that guaranteed autonomy, rights and freedoms in Hong Kong through 2047.

This talk will discuss the case of Jimmy Lai, the loss of Hong Kong freedoms, and potential impact for other countries in Asia.

Read presenter's biography
Sino-Japanese Relations: History, Martial Culture, Cross-cultural Exchanges and Interdisciplinary Research
Featured Interview: Clementina Cardoso & Hing Chao

Cultural practices and cultural knowledge are often neglected or allocated a minority role in international and intra-national relations.

However, cultural exchange is a fundamental factor in human society, informing artistic and cultural developments, and has been at the root of economic and political relations and a　route to commercial, political, technological and educational relations since the origin of the world economies and societies. Both material and intangible culture have been embedded in relations between countries and between peoples when coming together to exchange goods or technology, knowledge or material artifacts, raw materials or foods. This has been the　case within the Pacific as well as across the seas and continents.

Sometimes such practices and knowledge are lost or kept by individuals or by small　communities struggling to keep them alive and to pass them on to the next generations, as　their cultural survival is threatened by rapid changes in their inhabited landscape and ways　of life.

Historically, Sino-Japan relations have been defined by cultural exchanges as the peoples of Japan and China came together to trade, to learn from each other, to adopt each other’s　technologies and practices, ways of doing things and ways of thinking. Such has been the　case with martial culture in the two countries, which has influenced one another since the　beginning of diplomatic and trade relations, over a timespan of nearly two thousand years.

Hing Chao, a business leader and a scholar dedicated to working collaboratively across　sectors and to the exchange and dissemination of knowledge, practice and the material　culture of nomadic groups and martial arts will discuss the place of martial culture in the　history of Sino-Japan relations and will share the work and activities that are at the root of　demonstrating the fundamental importance of cross-cultural work and of working across　disciplines in collaboration across borders.

Read presenter's biography
Selfless: Journeys through Identity and Social Class
Featured Interview: Geoffrey Beattie

Geoff Beattie has come a long way from his humble beginnings in Belfast, as this stellar student became one of the world’s foremost experts on non-verbal communication following his studies at Birmingham and Cambridge Universities. Throughout his career, he has balanced being both an academic of international renown with parallel explorations into reportage, social commentary and journalism, and even found the time to write works of nonfiction. He is perhaps most well known from his burgeoning career as a populariser and interpreter of psychology on numerous television programmes, including his most high profile position: being the resident psychologist on the UK version of the worldwide sensation, Big Brother.

In this interview, Professor Beattie speaks to IAFOR Chairman and CEO, Joseph Haldane about his life and work, and his recently published autobiography, Selfless, and the intellectual, physical and moral journeys Beattie has undertaken throughout his life.

Read presenter's biography
Doomed to Happen? The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games
Featured Interview: Anoma van der Veere

The Olympic Games held in Tokyo in 1964 heralded the arrival of Japan on the world stage in the midst of rebuilding and regeneration following the Second World War. From global pariah, it was symbolically embraced into the family of nations. A few generations later the Olympic and Paralympic Games were once again awarded to Japan and were set to take place in 2020. The handover from Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo during the 2016 Games by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, as he was dressed as Super Mario, gave us a glimpse of the effort that Japan would put into organizing the Tokyo 2020 Games. Soon after, the Olympic clock outside Tokyo Station began counting down the days to the opening ceremony. However, Tokyo 2020 was not to be, at least not in 2020, and due to the fallout from the global pandemic and chronic mismanagement by the central government, the games were postponed and are now planned to be held in the face of widespread apathy and opposition. As we count down to Tokyo 2020, a year late, and without any foreign spectators, we ask ourselves: what is the point?

In this conversation, Anoma van der Veere, a researcher on Japan's Olympics and Paralympics and health policy will discuss the history of the Games in the country and of these games in particular, and his perspective on why the prospect of holding the Olympics has sometimes seemed like the most pressing item on the Japanese government's agenda.

Read presenter's biography
Intercultural Strategies in High-Performance Environments: Observations from the Rugby World Cup 2019
Keynote Presentation: Sean O’Connell

Heralded as the most commercially successful and socially engaged world cup to date, the Rugby World Cup 2019 was hosted across 12 cities in Japan from September to November in 2019. A total of twenty national teams participated in the tournament over a 44-day period and delivered the most competitive and best attended tournament in the world cup’s history. In order to succeed in the tournament, naturally each of the competing teams were immersed in a high-performance cultural environment. In this presentation, I will specifically discuss the intercultural strategies (intercultural sensitivity, adaptation and efficacy) witnessed and investigated during the world cup using a qualitative survey and non-participant observation approach in my role as a researcher and as a Team Liaison Officer for one of the competing national teams. Finally, I will address the research findings in terms of future implications for high-performance culture building contexts.

Read presenter biographies
Hing Chao
Wah Kwong Maritime Transport Holdings, Hong Kong

Biography

Pursuing a cross-sector career, Hing Chao has been active in arts and culture, heritage and education, as well as international shipping over the past two decades. In the business sector, he has been at the forefront of thought leadership for maritime development within the Greater Bay Area, being also the founder of the Greater Bay Area Maritime Forum, the deputy chairman of the China Sub-committee of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association, and a trustee of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.

In the arts and culture sector, Hing is widely known for his pioneering and wide-ranging work on martial arts, including the creation of “Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive”, the largest martial arts archive in the world, which he co-founded with Prof. Jeffrey Shaw (City University of Hong Kong) and Prof. Sarah Kenderdine (EPFL). He has also created several ground-breaking martial art exhibitions, most recently “Way of the Sword: Warrior Traditions in China and Italy” (2021). Since founding Hong Kong Culture Festival in 2015, he has been driving innovation in cross-disciplinary artistic partnerships – involving martial arts, dance, music, and new media arts – in Hong Kong.

He has also made significant contributions to the research and revival of endangered nomadic hunter-gatherer cultures in Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang province, through the activities of Orochen Foundation (which he founded in 2004). Its efforts include creating the most comprehensive Orochen music archive, “Orochen Cultural Preservation Project” (in partnerships with China National Museum of Ethnology), as well as preserving community oral history among North Tungusic groups in Hulunbuir.

He is the executive chairman of Wah Kwong Maritime Transport Holdings, the executive director of International Guoshu Association and Institute of Chinese Martial Studies, the founder of Hong Kong Culture Festival, and the founder of International Martial Studies Conference.

Featured Interview (2021) | Sino-japanese Relations: History, Martial Culture, Cross-cultural Exchanges and Inter-disciplinary Research
Bradley J. Hamm
Northwestern University, United States

Biography

Bradley J. Hamm is a full professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University, USA, serving as the dean from 2012 to 2018, where he oversaw Medill's programs in Chicago, Washington, DC, and San Francisco in addition to its home campus in Evanston. Previously, he was Dean of the Indiana University School of Journalism in Bloomington and Indianapolis, USA.

Hamm's PhD is in mass communication research from the University of North Carolina, USA. He received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of South Carolina, USA, and an undergraduate degree from Catawba College in North Carolina, USA.

He also served as the interim dean and associate dean of the School of Communications at Elon University in North Carolina, USA. Hamm has taught in study abroad programs in Japan, China and the United Kingdom and started his career as a newspaper reporter. His teaching and research interests are in journalism history and media theory, particularly agenda setting theory.

He served as a trustee for the Poynter Institute and is a judge for the Scripps Howard National Journalism Awards. He served as an independent, non-executive member of the Board of Directors for Next Digital media company of Hong Kong and Taiwan from 2015 to 2018.

Keynote Presentation (2021) | The Case of Jimmy Lai & The Rapid Loss of Freedom in Hong Kong
Clementina Cardoso
CIHRC Research and Development, Hong Kong

Biography

Clementina Cardoso is the Director of CIHRC Research and Development. Prior to this she was at the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy of the University of London Birkbeck College where she taught courses on Local Government, Public Policy and Management.

Dr Cardoso completed her PhD at LSE and held positions at University College London Institute of Education where she researched, taught and advised MA and PhD students and coordinated training for overseas civil servants and researchers. She has also been a European Commission Research Fellow, LSE, an Associate Fellow at the University of Lisbon and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Bristol Faculty of Social Sciences and Law; and held Visiting positions at the Universities of Lisbon, Louvain and has been Guest Professor on the MA and PhD programmes of, amongst others, the University of S. Paulo, Brazil. She has also been a keynote speaker at the European Parliament and at conferences.

She works within the tradition of British Government and Policy Studies, across the Social Sciences disciplines and uses comparative methodologies.

As a grant holder, she produced research sponsored by the National Science, Research and Technology Council of Portugal and the European Commission on comparative central government policy and political and economic philosophies; comparative methodologies; market-oriented policies, funding and financial management; the involvement of commercial organisations in service provision and management and partnership governance. She has served on Editorial Boards of Academic Journals; lived in Portugal, the United States, England and Hong Kong; is fluent in English, Portuguese and French, reads and speaks Spanish and Italian, has beginners knowledge of Chinese and starters knowledge of Japanese.

Dr Cardoso has an interest in the History, Culture, Philosophy and the Arts of China and Japan.

Featured Interview (2021) | Sino-japanese Relations: History, Martial Culture, Cross-cultural Exchanges and Inter-disciplinary Research
Geoffrey Beattie
Edge Hill University, United Kingdom

Biography

Geoffrey Beattie is Professor of Psychology at Edge Hill University, UK. Previously, he was Professor of Psychology at the University of Manchester, UK, as well as a Professorial Research Fellow at the university’s Sustainable Consumption Institute. He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He received his PhD from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK, and is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society (BPS), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has also been President of the Psychology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He has published over 100 articles in academic journals, including Nature and Nature Climate Change and was awarded the Spearman Medal by the BPS for “published psychological research of outstanding merit”, and the Mouton d’Or for the best research paper in semiotics.

He is the author of twenty six books with various Chinese, Taiwanese, Brazilian, Italian, Finnish and German editions. We Are the People: Journeys Through the Heart of Protestant Ulster (Heinemann) and The Corner Boys (Victor Gollancz) were both shortlisted for the Ewart-Biggs Literary Prize; On the Ropes: Boxing as a Way of Life (Victor Gollancz) was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year; Trophy Hunting: A Psychological Perspective (Routledge) was shortlisted for a Taylor & Francis Outstanding Book and Digital Product Award in the Outstanding Professional Category in 2019.

He has presented a number of television programmes in the UK on BBC1’s Life’s Too Short and Family SOS’, Channel 4’s Dump Your Mates in Four Days, and UKTV’s The Farm of Fussy Eaters. He was also the resident on-screen psychologist for Big Brother for eleven series on Channel 4 in the UK specialising in body language and social behaviour. His latest book Selfless: A Psychologist’s Journey through Identity and Social Class (Routledge) was reviewed by Professor Marcel Danesi from the University of Toronto, Canada who wrote: “What is the Self? How is it related to consciousness? This dilemma has entertained some of the greatest minds of human history. This book contributes in a significant way to that history, written by one of today’s great thinkers, Geoffrey Beattie. In this unique book, Beattie brings us into his own world of Self-construction. We thus come away understanding what psychology should really be....It is required reading by anyone interested in understanding what consciousness is and how it emerges throughout the life cycle.”

Featured Interview (2021) | Selfless: Journeys through Identity and Social Class
Anoma van der Veere
Leiden University, Netherlands

Biography

Anoma Phichai van der Veere is a Researcher of Modern Asia within the Leiden Asia Centre at Leiden University, a Researcher of Labour Policy at the International Institute of Social History (IISG) at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and a Research Fellow at the IAFOR Research Center at the Osaka School of International Public Policy. He is currently based at Osaka University, Japan, and has published on health and labour policy, sports, technology, and human rights in Asia and Europe, and is the editor of the forthcoming volume Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health Governance, Migrant Labour, and International Health Crises at Amsterdam University Press, a joint publication by the Leiden Asia Centre, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, and the IAFOR Research Center. His latest publications include: Japan’s Fragmented Response: Technology, Governance, and COVID-19 (Leiden Asia Centre, 2020), The Tokyo Paralympic Superhero: Manga and Narratives of Disability in Japan (Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 2020), and The Technological Utopia: Mimamori Care and Family Separation in Japan (AsiaScape: Digital Asia, 2019). He is currently the principal investigator in the Road to Tokyo 2020 project, funded by the Leiden Asia Centre, about local policymaking in disability sports in Tokyo in the run-up to the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Featured Interview (2021) | Doomed to Happen? The Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games
Sean O’Connell
Nanzan University, Japan

Biography

Sean O’Connell is currently a Professor at the Faculty of Policy Studies, Nanzan University, Japan where he teaches courses in intercultural business analysis, Japanese-English interpreting and intercultural workplace communication skills. He earned his PhD in Intercultural Communication in 2011 from the University of Queensland, Australia, and his current research interests include intercultural workplace communication, high-performance culture facilitation, and multicultural studies curriculum design.

Keynote Presentation (2021): Intercultural Strategies in High-Performance Environments: Observations from the Rugby World Cup 2019
Baden Offord
Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia & Cultural Studies Association of Australasia

Biography

Baden Offord was born in Aotearoa/New Zealand of Maori and Pakeha heritage, and has lived most of his life in Australia, as well as several years in Spain, South India and Japan. Baden holds the Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights and is a Senior Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights and Director of the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University. His research focuses on human rights, belonging, sexuality and gender, refugee studies, critical suicide studies, critical race studies, disability, eco-cultural studies and critical pedagogy. He has held visiting positions at The University of Barcelona; Critical Studies in Education Te Kura O te Kōtuinga Akoranga Mātauranga, University of Auckland; Kinsey Institute, Indiana University and Rajghat Centre, Varanasi, India. He was the 2010-2011 Chair (Visiting Professor) of Australian Studies in the Centre for Pacific Studies and American Studies, The University of Tokyo, and is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University. His most recent critical/lyric essay is: “Beyond Our Nuclear Entanglement,” Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, (2017), 22:3, 17-25. More recent articles include: "A case for reimagining Australia: Dialogic registers of the Other, truth-telling and a will to justice." (with Chan, Farquhar, Garbutt, Kerr, Shiosaki and Woldeyes), Coolabah 24 & 25: 199-212, 2018; and "Decolonizing Human Rights Education: Critical Pedagogy Praxis in Higher Education." (with Woldeyes) The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives 17 (1): 24-36, 2018.

Keynote Presentation (2019) | An Eco-humanising Post To The Future
Donald E. Hall
University of Rochester, United States

Biography

Donald E. Hall is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA. Prior to moving to Rochester, he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Dean Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Keynote Presentation (2020) | Dislocation/Invitation

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2019) | Resisting the Cynical Turn: Projections of a Desirably Queer Future
Keynote Presentation (2018) | The Cities We Fled
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
Sue Ballyn
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Sue Ballyn is the Founder and Honorary Director of the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies Centre at the University of Barcelona, Spain, from where she graduated with a BA in 1982. Her MA thesis on the writings of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes won the Faculty prize in 1983. In 1986, she won the Faculty prize again, this time for her PhD thesis on Australian poetry, the first PhD on Australian literature in Spain.

She joined the English and German Philology Department on graduation in 1982 and has remained at the university ever since. In 1990, she founded the Australian Studies Program which was recognised as an official University of Barcelona Observatory-Studies Centre in 2000, known as CEA, Observatorio Centre d’Estudis Australians. It is the only Australian Studies Centre in Spain and one of the most active in Europe.

Over the last twenty-five years, Sue Ballyn’s research has been focused on foreign convicts transported to Australia, in particular Spanish, Portuguese, Hispanics and Sephardim, and she works closely with the Female Convicts Research Centre, Tasmania. She has published and lectured widely in the area, very often in collaboration with Professor Lucy Frost. May 25, 2018 will see the publication of a book on Adelaide de la Thoreza, a Spanish convict, written by herself and Lucy Frost.

More recently she has become involved in a project on ageing in literature DEDAL-LIT at Lleida University, Spain, which in turn formed part of a European project on ageing: SIforAge. As part of this project she is working on Human Rights and the Elderly, an area she started to research in 1992. In 2020, a book of interviews with elderly women, with the working title Stories of Experience, will be published as a result of this project. These oral stories are drawn from field work she has carried out in Barcelona.

She was recently involved in a ministry funded Project, run out of the Australian Studies Centre and headed by Dr Bill Phillips, on Postcolonial Crime Fiction (POCRIF). This last project has inevitably intertwined itself with her work on convicts and Australia. Her present work focuses on Sephardi Jews in Asian diaspora, and the construction of ageing.

Keynote Presentation (2019) | Can we agree to disagree? Unreclaimable Futures

Previous Presentations

Spotlight Presentation (2017) | “(…) For those in peril on the sea”: The Important Role of Surgeons on Convict Transports
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | The Challenges of Doing Cultural Studies Today
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.

A Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance, Dr Haldane is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade (Serbia), a Visiting Professor at the School of Business at Doshisha University (Japan), and a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (USA).

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

Panel Discussion (2020) | Communication, Technology and Transparency in Times of COVID
Seiko Yasumoto
University of Sydney, Australia

Biography

Dr Seiko Yasumoto lectures and carries out research on Japanese and East Asian media and cultural studies at the University of Sydney. Her primary research, which she has published widely, includes Japanese government media policy and broadcasting media within the domain of popular culture. The scope includes transmission of content, textual analysis, copyright, media industries, adaptation theory, youth culture, audience analysis and trans-national media cultural flows in Japan and East Asia. She is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies, guest editor of the Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia special edition on Global Media 2010 and co-editor of the scholarly journal Ilha Do Desterro a Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies: Expression, Identity and Society.Vol.2006. She was the Japan and North, East Asia regional representative of the Asian Studies of Association of Australia (2009-2012), is an editorial board member of the Oriental Society of Australia, the East Asian Popular Culture Association and Journalism and Mass communication USA. She holds a prestigious Teaching Excellence Award from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney, Australia.

Previous Presentations

Spotlight Presentation (2017) | Cross-Cultural Engagement and Media Integration in Japan and East Asia