ADI Conference 2016

Asian Dynamics Initiative




University of Copenhagen

Scholars of Asian Studies have convened annually in Copenhagen since 2008 under the aegis of ADI. Past conferences have brought together scholars, students, media professionals and policy practitioners from across the world and a number of leading institutions. 

Building on this success, we are pleased to announce the ADI Conference 2016. The aim of the conference is to rethink Asia across historical time and space in a global context. Home to more than half the world’s population, Asia is now widely acknowledged as the main driving force of world economy in the early 21st century. While the euphoric discourses of the ‘Asian century’ have gathered considerable force in the past decade, the actual accounts of this shift still remain skeletal and dispersed. The conference collectively addresses this by bringing together fresh intra-disciplinary scholarship built upon a number of related research enquiries. Locating Asia beyond, and within, its territoriality, we explore historical connections, circulations and contentions that produce Asia within a global epistemic frame. 

The conference will feature keynote addresses, roundtables and panels across disciplines, temporalities and themes in the study of Asian dynamics.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

  • Kenneth Pomeranz, University Professor of Modern Chinese History and in the College, The University of Chicago

  • Tansen Sen, Professor of History, City University New York (CUNY) and NYU Shanghai Campus 

  • Engseng Ho, Professor of Anthropology and Islamic Studies, Duke University and Muhammad Alagil Distinguished Visiting Professor in Arabia Asia Studies, ARI, National University of Singapore 

  • Christian Göbel, University Professor of Modern China Studies, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna 


CALL FOR ABSTRACT - deadline 1 March

For further information please visit the conference website.