Trends in Asian Studies
From 2019 to 2021, Melissa Crouch and Edward Aspinall (ANU) are co-leading a major educational review of trends in Asian Studies in Australia, in their roles on the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) Council. Roughly every twenty years, a review of teaching and research in Asian Studies is undertaken. For this education report, we are analysing trends in Asian language enrolments, Asian Studies courses, university engagement in Asia, research, student mobility, and university and government support for Asian Studies over the past two decades (2000-2020). This project is funded by ANU, ASAA and UNSW. The report will offer concrete recommendations for reform to both the government and universities to ensure that Australia remains a global leader in Asian Studies.
We have organised a series of events related to this project. In November 2019, Ed and Melissa co-hosted a workshop on ‘The State of Asian Studies in Australia’ with 15 leading scholars of Asian Studies from across the disciplines. In 2020, we edited these papers and published them as part of a blog series on the ASAA blog (15 posts).
- Asian Politics in Australian Universities, Michael Barr
Evolution of Mainland Southeast Asia Studies over the last 20 years, Patrick Jory - Twenty Years of Korean Studies in Australia, Ruth Barraclough
- Chinese Studies in Australian Universities, Anne McLaren
- Australian International Relations and Asia, Jennifer Canfield and Mathew Davies
- Anthropology of/with Asia in Australia, Tanya Jakimow
- Asian Law in Australian Universities: Research Centres as Critical Institutional Commitments, Melissa Crouch
- South Asian Studies in Australia, Priya Chacko
- The State of Indonesian Language in Australian Universities, David Hill
- Reviewing the State of Asian Studies in Australia, Edward Aspinall
- The Current State of Japanese Studies in Australia, Rebecca Suter
- One Path or Many for Asian Politics, David Hundt
- From Asian Engagement to the New ‘Cold War’: Asian Studies in Crisis, Kanishka Jayasuriya
As part of this project, we have also contributed to public debate on the decline in Asian languages in Australia. See here for more
In 2020 we organised a webinar on Asian Studies in Crisis with keynote speaker Professor Kanishka Jayasuriya (Murdoch).
In 2021, Melissa organised a webinar on International Education and Asian Studies, with keynote speaker Professor Ly Tran (Deakin).