DGA Biennial Conference “Transnational Asian Studies—Multi-level Dynamics of Identity Formation and Institution Building”Dennis Arabadzhiev, Dirk Bremann, Anna Grimminger, Gwendolin Kleine Stegemann, Kerstin Lukner, Annika Seidel, Lea Wallraff und and Anke Weßelmann

ASIEN – Nr. 158/159 (2021) pp. 202–13

organized in cooperation with AREA Ruhr
DGA and AREA Ruhr (online), March 10–12, 2021

Due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis the Alliance for Research on East Asia (AREA) Ruhr, a joint research and teaching alliance of the Faculty of East Asian Studies at Bochum University and the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen, hosted the 2021 DGA biennial conference as an online event, offering virtual museum tours and country trips, virtual tea rooms for private chats, as well as an online quiz on top of three keynote speeches, three roundtables and fifteen conference panels. The conference was joined by 215 participants. On the first conference day, Claudia Derichs (HU Berlin) gave a thought-provoking keynote lecture on “Transnational Asian Studies: Implementing an Agenda for our Times” in which she argued in favor of rescaling research entities when studying regions and focusing on “entities of interest” instead of on mere geographical units. With regards to transnational research methods Derichs emphasized the importance of epistemic decolonization, i.e. the inclusion of non-Western analytical concepts and methodological approaches, as well as collaboration with colleagues in and from Asia. In the subsequent panel discussion, Susanne Brandtstädter (Cologne), Matthias Middell (Leipzig), Jörg Plassen (Bochum/AREA Ruhr), and Karen Shire (Duisburg-Essen/AREA Ruhr) agreed on the need to make the voices of “global Asia” more audible in their respective fields of research and reflected on ways to do so as well as obstacles to decolonization in their own Asia-related scholarship…