On the second day of the conference we gathered for a Nordic roundtable which was to discuss the state of affairs in the Nordic countries when it comes to the study of Asia. Some might say that they first day ended up as being a little bit abstract and high flying but this surely changed on the second day.

10 minutes – over and out
To facilitate discussion it had been decided that each presentation (there were 8 and two discussants) should be limited to 10 minutes. This proved quit a challenge for the participants – maybe due to their academic training which does not normally promote few words and conclusions without thorough argumentation. As one of the participants noted during lunch after the event was over: ‘normally I would use ten minutes just to present my self…’ Well, this time it was ’10 minutes – over and out’ and it was fascinating to see how the participants in many cases ended up producing some rather provocative statements which was good for the following discussion.

The cold war is over – let’s look ahead!
This would be a rather extensive report if I was to mention all the aspects that were raised during the roundtable. Also, if would be obsolete since NIAS will disseminate minutes from the event shortly and make them available at the conference website. However, I will mention some of the major conclusions and point towards some of the obvious challenges.

It seems that the concept of ‘area studies’ is dead. It was a product of the cold war and now it makes no sense to stick to the paradigms it established. Nevertheless, disciplines such as ‘Asian studies’ or ‘African studies’ or for the matter ‘European studies’ etc. still have a relevance as academic disciplines and fields of expertise. However, it was also recognised that much of the research carried out in these fields are based in fore instance social sciences disciplines and no longer only in the institutes offering language training, philology, history and cultural understanding. Therefore, the fight between humanities, social sciences and hard sciences is irrelevant today; the different disciplines and their sub-disciplines must develop together. This will present a good basis for looking ahead and could be taken as a sign that the ‘cold war logic’ between the two sides is put away.

Speak out!
During presentations and discussions it was suggested that research projects would benefit from being problem oriented rather then just topical. Many researchers and PhD students are already working problem oriented and it seems to be a good way of making research projects and their findings relevant in a larger context. Also, it was suggested that comparative studies – especially in this so-called time of globalization – is a discipline that many research projects can benefit from. Comparative perspectives should be implemented in relation to specific subjects as well as on regional and trans-regional levels.

It was also suggested that Asian studies specialists should enter larger debates in society at large in order to demonstrate the value of Asian studies. Likewise there seem to be an ‘open space’ for engaging in international issues such as the Iraq war by incorporating Asian dimensions in the international debate. Speak out!

ACRSN is on the right track but new initiatives are needed
The cluster organization adopted by the ACRSN was widely acknowledged as a good idea and I hope this means that we will see some more activities in each cluster. However, we still need to have a clear format for the format, activities and functionality of each cluster and ACRSN in general.

One very concrete thing that was brought up was a network of co-supervisors. This is something that we have discussed previously but will now place increase attention on in order to get a framework up and running.

Finally, the conference and the roundtable showed clearly that there is a lot of innovation and exciting developments in the environments throughout the region. For these activities to be properly communicated it is important that NIAS and the ACRSN secretariat (me is continuously informed, so please keep the information flowing!

Next update will be on the PhD course it self.

Thanks for reading! // martin

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