A LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR

Welcome to the Global Asias 7 conference! We are delighted to once again be hosting this event, which is an opportunity to bring scholars together to be in community and collectively develop the multidisciplinary conversations and approaches that are so distinctively fundamental to the Global Asias mission as we have been developing it through the GAI and its related projects. After a hiatus of many years, we are thrilled to be returning to the historic Nittany Lion Inn for the conference. No doubt its beautifully renovated spaces will prove an ideal setting for the for lively trans-field exchanges that are the hallmarks of this biennial conference series.

Each conference is an opportunity for us to celebrate the work we’ve been doing to advance Global Asias, not only as an emerging scholarly field of knowledge production but also as a community of scholars. As many of you already know, the conference series is one of many GAI projects designed to support those interested in working in/with/on Global Asias, and we sincerely hope that your attendance at GA7 will lead to more sustained participation with the GAI and its varied projects.

At this year’s conference, we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of our award-winning journal Verge: Studies in Global Asias. We remember the feelings of excitement, apprehension, and curiosity generated by launching the journal at the GA3 conference in 2015—and revel in the many successes Verge has enjoyed in its first decade of existence. To highlight those accomplishments, the GA7 program features some congratulatory blurbs contributed by those who have been impacted by its mission.

Sincerely,
Tina Chen
Director, Global Asias Initiative