The American Political Science Association (APSA) has been awarded a $365,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to organize a series of annual political science workshops in East and Southeast Asia. The Asia-Pacific Workshops are a multi-year effort to support political science research and networking among early-career scholars across the region. Alongside APSA’s successful Africa and MENA programs, the Asia Workshops extend APSA’s engagement with the international political science community and strengthen efforts to support research networks linking US scholars with their colleagues overseas.
APSA Asia-Pacific Workshops in brief:
- Series of week-long, residential, political science workshops
- Networking approximately 26 scholars from East and Southeast Asia and the United States each year
- Post-workshop research grants and other networking opportunities
- Funded by the Luce Foundation for 2019-2020
Working with regional host universities, APSA will organize one 7-day workshop per year. Each program brings together approximately 22 fellows alongside 4 senior scholars for training in research and writing skills and to foster regional and international collaboration. The program is geared towards PhD candidates, post-docs, and early career faculty working in political science and other social science disciplines. While the program prioritizes scholars from across East and Southeast Asia, a limited number of PhD candidates from US universities may also take part.
Each annual program is dedicated to a central theme in emerging political science research, with a unique schedule of lectures, discussions, topical presentations and debates, guest speakers, peer review sessions, professional development seminars, and local field trips. Throughout the workshop, fellows receive critical feedback on their own research and work to refine these manuscripts for publication. In the process, fellows form important professional networks of peer review, support, and collaboration. Following their participation in the workshop, alumni are given complimentary membership to APSA and are eligible to apply for grants to facilitate further professional development and research collaboration.
The product of these endeavors will be a network of early-career scholars from East and Southeast Asia who are well-grounded in research design and methodology, knowledgeable of the current literature and theoretical debates surrounding key contemporary issues, and closely connected to a variety of supportive scholarly communities. The research and cultural exchange advanced through this program will help build the field of Asian studies and broaden our understanding of important issues affecting Asia and the United States alike.
The program is led by a Steering Committee including Meredith Weiss as chair (SUNY-Albany), Soo Yeon Kim (National University of Singapore), Edmund Malesky (Duke University), Jennifer Pan (Stanford University), and Jong-sung You (Gachon University). A Call for Applications for the 2019 Asia Workshop will be announced in January 2019. Updates and additional information can be found on the project website: https://connect.apsanet.org/asia/.