Event — Conference

A Multitude of Encounters with Asia - Gender Perspectives

A conference and PhD course in Reykjavic, organised by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (RIKK) and EDDA, the Center of Excellence (both of the University of Iceland), the Gendering Asia Network (GAN), and IIAS.

From 13 - 17 October 2014, the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), together with the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (RIKK) and EDDA, the Center of Excellence (both of the University of Iceland), the Gendering Asia Network (GAN), and IIAS, organise the 8th Annual NNC Conference and PhD course, in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Conference: 13-15 October 2014
PhD Course: 16-17 October 2014

Introduction to the theme of the conference and PhD course

One of the great challenges in increased relations with Asia through business, culture, life biographies, historical relations as well as ITC networks is to make the importance of gender visible. Encounters have become increasingly, mutually interrelated and perhaps even dependent in multiple ways. Economically encounters are wide-ranging with financial decisions made in one part of the world affecting the real lives of many in the other part of the world. In the political sphere the need for enhancing mutual understanding and tolerance grows every day. How can we understand these multiple links, interactions and encounters and how are they gendered? Some encounters are vividly obvious and others are less prominently visible, or perhaps consciously or unconsciously made obscure. How is knowledge of encounters being produced, by whom and for what purposes?

This conference on macro and micro level encounters with Asia, including encounters between Asia and the Nordic countries, takes the traveling of theories, concepts, ideas, practices, products and people as its starting point and asks

  1. How gender and gender relations play into, create, and are created in the course of a multitude of encounters
  2. How transnational feminism has produced knowledge in the context of globalization

Keynote speakers

Kathy Davis, Senior Research Fellow, Sociology, VU University, Amsterdam
Mary E. John, Senior Fellow, Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi
Wil Burghoorn, Senior Lecturer, Social Anthropology, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg