Asian Studies Centre
About us
The Asian Studies Centre was founded in 1982, as the successor to the Far East Centre (established in 1954) at St Antony’s College. Its activities are supported by an endowment at the College and from external grants. Like its predecessor, the Asian Studies Centre is primarily a co-ordinating organisation which exists to bring together specialists from a wide variety of different disciplines. It is a forum for supporting activities through which scholars from across the University and beyond discuss thematic topics of comparative and of regional interest.
Which area does the centre cover?
Geographically, the Centre predominantly covers South, Southeast and East Asia. The Asian Studies Centre works closely with scholars in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the Oxford China Centre, the South Asian Studies, the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies (in premises at St Antony’s) and the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme. The Asian Studies Centre hosts the weekly Modern South Asian Studies Seminar and the South Asian Intellectual History Seminars. It also supports a variety of other country-specific and/or thematic seminar series, workshops, conferences, lectures and activities, which vary from year to year. The Centre has in the past been host to the Taiwan Studies Programme, Programme in Modern Burmese Studies
The Asian Studies Centre is keen to support comparative research on Asia, and research on regional themes, to encourage debate and dialogue within the diverse student body of St Antony’s College and across the University more generally. To facilitate communications, the Centre issues a weekly round-up of Asian studies events and notices (in term-time).
Scholarships and Fellowships
The Asian Studies Centre administers the Wai Seng Senior Research Scholarship which provides two years of support for a DPhil student working in the field of Asia-Pacific studies. It also administers the Sino British Fellowship Trust Grant. The centre hopes in the future to develop more sources for student support.
The Centre welcomes opportunities to develop collaborations with academics and institutions working on Asia elsewhere in the UK and in other parts of the world.