ICAS 13 – Crossways of Knowledge. An international Conference-Festival at Surabaya, Indonesia

The 13th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 13) will be held in Surabaya, Indonesia, a thriving city with a rich history, from 28 July – 1 August 2024. As a major maritime hub, Surabaya has long acted as a crossway of peoples, ideas and goods. Today, it is a vibrant metropolis and a gateway to the Eastern part of Indonesia and Oceania, where modern skyscrapers scramble with canals and buildings from the colonial era, with vibrant neighborhoods/kampungs in which people from different parts of Indonesia live alongside descendants of Chinese, Arab and Malay settlers.

ICAS 13 Surabaya represents a new phase in the efforts of IIAS and its global partners to re-imagine the Academic Conference in the post-COVID-19 era. In today’s world, the effects of disturbed human-nature relations have become visible in every aspect of daily life. We are convinced that in spite of the expediency of digital platforms, in-person academic events are still important, so long as they embrace a place-based approach to questions of global relevance. We as organisers of this International Convention of Asia Scholars propose to host the meeting in summer 2024 at the very centre of the realities of Asia. To that end, participants are invited to embed themselves within the local context, engage across regional and disciplinary divides and explore new practices of knowledge production.

ICAS 13 mobilises IIAS’s networks of partner institutions and individuals from across the world but is embedded in the social, economic and ecological realities of Surabaya. Our primary local partner is the Surabaya-based Universitas Airlangga (UNAIR), together with its newly established Airlangga Institute of Indian Ocean Crossroads (AIIOC). AIIOC is an autonomous international platform established on the initiative of four faculties at Universitas Airlangga: Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Public Health. AIIOC and IIAS's collaborative mission is to stimulate inquiry into the rich resources offered by the city of Surabaya and the people of East Java as a way to create an experiential local-global Conference-Festival (ConFest) that celebrates diversity in collaboration within and beyond academia extending to civil society and the arts. Through our partnership, we are committed to organising a unique event comprising a sustained series of panels, interactive roundtables, poster sessions, methodological workshops and hands-on activities. In and around the ConFest venues, we will also host participatory local engagements as well as Book, Film, Food and Craft Fairs.

Crossways of Knowledge, the title of the 2024 convention, evokes the multiple modalities and serendipities of contemporary knowledge exchange between academia and society. ICAS 13 will be grounded in globally relevant themes that will unfold across panels, interactive roundtables, poster presentations, methodologies and hands-on workshops, book, film, food and craft fairs, exhibitions and other participatory formats of local engagements, in and around ConFest venues.  

Call for Proposals – deadline: 25 October 2023

The submission deadline for proposals of Individual Abstracts, Panels, Roundtables, Posters, Films and Documentaries, Book Presentations is 25 October 2023.

We also welcome you to share other formats, ideas, activities, workshops and exhibitions with us. If you would like to propose a suggestion for any of these formats, please share the details with us. These formats follow the same deadline: 25 October 2023. For more information on all proposal formats (including the number of participants per panel/roundtable), please click here.

Check out the full call for proposals, theme descriptions and submissions portal at https://icas.asia/icas13-cfp

ICAS 13 Book and Craft Fair

Publishers and institutes are invited to exhibit at the Book and Craft Fair at ICAS 13 to present their work to the large number of attendees. Should you be interested in exhibiting at ICAS 13, please contact us at: icas13@iias.nl

Information

For queries about ICAS 13, please contact us at icas13@iias.nl