Jacques Bertrand (Director, Collaborative Specialization in Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Studies and Professor, Political Science) has published Winning by Process: The State and Neutralization of Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar (Cornell University Press, 2022). Winning by Process asks why the peace...
Tong Lam’s photo essay for positions analyzes the politics of eviction, demolition, resistance, and gentrification in China through an urban village renewal project. Tong Lam; The Dark Side of the Miracle: Spectacular and Precarious Accumulation in an Urban Village under Siege...
Diana Fu and Emile Dirks have co-published a chapter in a new book published by Brookings Press. The book, The Party Leads All: The Evolving Role of the Chinese Communist Party (Brookings Institution Press, 2022). Their chapter, “The Party’s Struggle...
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2022 Emmrich, Christoph, Joseph McQuade, Sana Aiyar and Thibaut d’Hubert. (2022). Towards a Burma-inclusive South Asian Studies: A Roundtable. Modern Asian Studies, 1-38. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X21000718 Abstract Burma, or Myanmar as it was renamed...
Lynette H. Ong (Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Asian Institute) has published Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China (Oxford University Press, 2022). A compelling examination of China’s engagement of nonstate actors as a counterintuitive solution to...
Teaching and research are two sides of the same coin. Good research relies on innovative teaching, and also leads into it.
Bringing together leading experts on Asia from across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the Asian Institute is an aggregator and accelerator of faculty and student research. Our pan-Asian approach furthers the deep, specialized knowledge about particular regions that is necessary to understand the complexities of local issues, while fostering transnational and interdisciplinary conversations that transcend and contextualize local viewpoints. Through our innovative teaching programs, projects, and events, we provide researchers with the inspiration, support, and resources they need to produce leading-edge scholarship on Asia.
November 15, 2013
The Hong Kong Basic Law Portal was successfully launched with a well-attended ceremony held at the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library on November 13, 2013. The ceremony was officiated with remarks by Dr. Vivienne Poy, Chair of the Advisory...
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November 15, 2013
Dr. David Chu Distinguished Visitor Series This talk concerns the fascinating nexus between Time and Nationalism in the late 19th century and especially in the colonized world. This was the time when suboceanic telegraph cables, owned by huge private corporations,...
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November 15, 2013
Jacques Bertrand’s new book provides a fresh and highly original survey of politics and political change in Southeast Asia, against the backdrop of rapid economic development and social transformation.
Read full articleNovember 15, 2013
Edited by Jacques Bertrand and Oded Haklai Many new democracies are characterized by majority dominance and ethnocentrism. Varying paths or transitions toward democracy create very different outcomes for how ethnic identities, communities and politics are recognized. This book illustrates the...
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October 10, 2013
Webcast of talk by David Shambaugh at the Asian Institute on October 10, 2013
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September 25, 2013
In The Light of Knowledge: Literacy Activism and the Politics of Writing in South India, Francis Cody’s ethnography of the Arivoli Iyakkam (the Enlightenment Movement) highlights the paradoxes inherent in movements that seek to emancipate people through literacy when literacy is a power-laden social practice in its own right.
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April 3, 2013
The 2012-13 Global Ideas Institute (GII) challenged Toronto-area high school students to create a strategy to scale up the supply of Sprinkles micronutrient powders, improve the distribution of the product, and ensure that targeted end-users (people in developing countries who have limited access to a diverse supply of foods and are at risk of micronutrient deficiencies) are aware of it and are using it correctly. Students worked together with U of T professors and undergraduate and graduate student mentors throughout the year on this problem, culminating in a day-long symposium where they present their findings to leading experts in the field.
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March 2, 2013
The Social Innovation Research Group held a groundbreaking conference in Taipei, Taiwan, in February 2013 that brought together guests from diverse fields within the local social enterprise community. The SIRG symposium was held to discuss the ways in which success in social enterprise can be achieved and measured, as well as how to coordinate the social enterprise community in order to achieve maximum impact in society.
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March 1, 2013
Students in CAS400Y1: Critical Perspectives on Asian Modernity and JPA411H1: Global Taiwan successfully received funding from the Faculty of Arts and Science to embark on an international course module (ICM) to Taipei, Taiwan, and Xiamen, China, over Reading Week 2013....
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February 6, 2013
In 2012, a group of undergraduate students in the University of Toronto’s Contemporary Asian Studies program founded and organized the first annual “Interrogating Notions of Development and Progress” (INDePth) conference, bringing together future leaders to ask important questions and devise...
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