Conference on Imagining Asia(s): Networks, Actors, Sites- Jointly organized by Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre and Nalanda University

October 28, 2016

The Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre and Nalanda University (India) jointly organised the conference “Imagining Asia(s): Networks, Actors, Sites” at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore, Yusof Ishak Institute on 10–11 October 2016.

Fourteen scholars from nine countries gathered at the conference in Singapore to explore Asian societies as interconnected formations through trajectories/networks of circulation of people, ideas, and objects in the longue durée. Moving beyond the divides of old Area Studies scholarship and the arbitrary borders set by late colonial empires and the rise of post-colonial nation states, this conference mapped critically the configuration of contact zones in which mobile bodies, minds, and cultures interact to foster new images, identities, and imaginations of Asia.

The two-day conference concluded with a short roundtable, in which the conveners discussed the issues of (trans)locality, mobility, and imagination in Asian contexts. Close to 70 participants attended the conference.

Conference on Imagining Asia(s): Networks, Actors, Sites held at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute