Urban Hybridity in the Post-Colonial Age

The Macau Winter School will focus on two interrelated themes: the theoretical issue of postcolonial hybridity and the descriptive/analytical problems presented by Asian cities. The first theme, extensively developed by such scholars as Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall, and Paul Gilroy, has been applied to the analysis of the nation-state state by Akhil Gupta and others, while Michael Herzfeld has addressed some of the lived experiences of postcolonial and cryptocolonial societies using a comparative approach to urban communities in Asia and Europe. Historian and Anthropologist Engseng Ho has, for his part, reflected on interstitial connections between imperial and diasporic formations, as they are found in maritime port-cities like Macau.

Gupta, Herzfeld, and Ho will lead the Winter School and bring their expertise and experience, representing the rich mixture of their intellectual perspectives and individual trajectories to bear in interactive engagement with research students from various disciplinary backgrounds. This activity, conducted in the vibrant context of Macau, should ensure an unprecedented training experience for the selected PhD students. The exercise should help them, as they pursue their own research projects, to elicit and develop new theoretical paradigms of postcolonial urban hybridity informed by experiences from various contexts in Asia and elsewhere.

The key themes related to postcolonial urban hybridity include but are not limited to:

• Rethinking notions of hybridity, métissage, creolization, etc., in urban contexts
• The colonial / postcolonial city – cities before, during, and after Empire
• Postcolonial and cryptocolonial nation-states and cities
• Port-cities and maritime connections
• Contests over land use and ownership (gentrification, eviction, “disneyfication,” ethnic and spatial “cleansing”)

 Participation is highly competitive and will be limited to a maximum of 20. The IIAS Summer School 2012 has welcomed participants from Europe, America, Asia and Australia and 16 nationalities were represented.

See for the criteria and the application form the information under Application.

The registration fee for participation at the IIAS Summer Programme is 200 Euro. For more information on what is included, please see General information.

A small number of grants will be available for students. For more information, please see Financial support.

For who
The Summer Programme in Asian Studies is meant for PhD Students. This means that we do not accept students other than PhD researchers.

Registration
Closed 16 May 2013.

Selection procedure
The programme allows a maximum of 20 participants. All applicants, who registered before the deadline (16 May 2013), will be informed about the selection before 15 July 2013. We will not correspond about the outcome of the selection procedure.

Registration fee
Participants must pay the following registration fee: € 200.
The registration fee includes half board accommodation (breakfast and lunch)

Accommodation
Lodging is included in the registration fee for the selected participants.

Travel costs
Selected participants are expected to fund their own travel expenses. Limited (partial) scholarships are available. We recommend that you try to raise funds to cover your transportation and/or other expenses as early as possible.

Payment
After you have received the confirmation of your participation, you will receive further information about the payment of the registration fee. You can pay with credit card (Master or Visa) and via bank transfer.

Cancellation policy
Participation in the Macau Winter School can be cancelled free of charge until 60 days before the start. If cancellation occurs within 60 days prior to the start of the programme, the fee will not be refunded.

Certificate
Participants can receive a certificate for the Macau Winter School. 

The 2013 Winter School on Urban Hybridity in the Post-Colonial Age is organized by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and runs in partnership with the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Macau. 

The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a research and exchange platform based in Leiden, the Netherlands. IIAS encourages the multi‐disciplinary and comparative study of Asia and promotes national and international cooperation, acting as an interface between academic and non‐academic partners, including cultural, social and policy organisations. The main research foci are Asian cities, dynamics of cultural heritage, and the global projection of Asia. These themes are broadly framed so as to maximise interactions and collaborative initiatives. IIAS is also open to new ideas of research and policy‐related projects.

In keeping with the Dutch tradition of transferring goods and ideas, IIAS works both as an academically informed think tank and as a clearinghouse of knowledge. It provides information services, builds networks and sets up cooperative programmes. Among IIAS activities are the organisation of seminars, workshops and conferences, outreach programmes for the general public, the publication of an internationally renowned newsletter, support of academic publication series, and maintaining a comprehensive database of researchers and Asian studies institutions. IIAS hosts the secretariats of the European Alliance for Asian Studies and the International Convention of Asian Scholars. In this way, IIAS functions as a window on Europe for non‐European scholars, contributing to the cultural rapprochement between Asia and Europe. | More information

Being the largest faculty of the University of Macau, the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (FSH) consists of the Department of Chinese, Department of Communication, Department of Economics, Department of English, Department of Government and Public Administration, Department of History, Department of Portuguese, Department of Psychology, and Department of Sociology, and offers comprehensive and diverse undergraduate and graduate programmes.

In addition, there are four research centres in FSH: Centre for Chinese Culture, Centre for Japanese Studies, Centre for Luso-Asian Studies, and Social Science Research Centre on Contemporary China, all of which work closely with the faculty of various programmes and provide teaching and research support while conducting their respective research projects independently.

FSH aims to equip students with the vision, knowledge and skills that they need to become global citizens, capable of working, living and playing leadership roles in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world. Graduates from FSH are much sought after by prestigious graduate schools and employers in various sectors, in Macao, China and overseas. Please visit http://www.umac.mo/fsh for more information.