IAFOR > The IAFOR Conference on Heritage – Hong Kong (Heritage-HongKong) > 2018 Overview

2018 Overview

Conference Theme: "Heritage"

December 5–7, 2018 | The University of Hong Kong (HKU), Hong Kong

Heritage studies have become a significant and well-identified area of both scholarly study and societal engagement. The management of artistic, cultural and intellectual resources is an increasingly difficult challenge that requires the ability to appreciate, and the skills to protect and conserve, the diversity of human production.

This conference aims to host and promote discussions about ways in which human heritage is perceived, described, as well as managed in contemporary society, with particular focus on Asian contexts. We are interested in highlighting the challenges in relation to intangible heritage, which poses issues of ethics such as property rights, political control in totalitarian regimes, and endangerment under the pressure of globalising forces.

We invite papers as well as panel proposals on the following topics:

  • Descriptive/documentary approaches to intellectual heritage, in terms of thought, language, and cultural/artistic performances and traditions
  • Heritage Perception and Management
  • Challenging the Heritage Narrative
  • Heritage and Film in Popular Culture
  • Migration Networks and Heritage
  • Heritage and the Digital World
  • Heritage Tourism
  • Heritage and Gender

The Local Context

Hong Kong has traditionally been associated as a meeting place of peoples, ideas and concepts; of clashes, fusions and synergies, including East and West, tradition and modernity, freedom and repression. After years of rapid development, modernisation and relative wealth, the notion of 'heritage' has started to gain currency, especially in terms of built heritage. However many forms of less tangible heritage are still poorly understood and overlooked in Hong Kong, China, and indeed throughout the world. Traditional crafts, musical heritage, minority languages, youth culture, and most recently liberal philosophies are all part of a heritage which Hong Kong, like many other places, might stand to lose. In this sense it is an ideal crossroads to meet and discuss regional trends and global conceptions of intangible and intellectual heritage, its challenges, its management, and its future.

The IAFOR Conference on Heritage – Hong Kong (Heritage–HongKong) is a multidisciplinary conference held at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Keynote, Featured and Spotlight Speakers will provide a variety of perspectives from different academic and professional backgrounds.

In conjunction with IAFOR's Global Partners, including The University of Hong Kong (HKU), we look forward to welcoming you to Hong Kong!

– The Heritage–HongKong Organising Committee

Umberto Ansaldo, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Giorgio Biancorosso, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
John Carroll, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Stephen Y.W. Chu, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Joseph Haldane, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
Donald E. Hall, University of Rochester, USA
Nicole Huang, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Yeewan Koon, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Lisa Lim, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Mark Pegrum, The University of Western Australia, Australia

Key Information
  • Location & Venue: The University of Hong Kong (HKU), Hong Kong
  • Dates: Wednesday, December 05, 2018 ​to Friday, December 07, 2018
  • Conference Theme: "Heritage"
  • Early Bird Abstract Submission Deadline: July 24, 2018*
  • Final Abstract Submission Deadline: September 22, 2018
  • Registration Deadline for Presenters: October 24, 2018

*Submit early to take advantage of the discounted registration rates. Learn more about our registration options.

Submit an Abstract

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Programme

  • Documentary Strategies for Chinese Martial Arts as Living Heritage in Hong Kong: Perspectives from the Field
    Documentary Strategies for Chinese Martial Arts as Living Heritage in Hong Kong: Perspectives from the Field
    Keynote Presentation: Hing Chao
  • Traveling Exchanges: Theatres, Architectures, and Heritage
    Traveling Exchanges: Theatres, Architectures, and Heritage
    Keynote Presentation: Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
  • Escape from Heritage
    Escape from Heritage
    Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall
  • IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session
    IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session

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Speakers

Keynote, Featured and Spotlight Speakers will provide a variety of perspectives from different academic and professional backgrounds.

  • Hing Chao
    Hing Chao
    International Guoshu Association
  • Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
    Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
    Maryland Institute College of Art, USA & Folded Paper Dance and Theatre Limited, Hong Kong
  • Mark Pegrum
    Mark Pegrum
    The University of Western Australia, Australia
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    University of Rochester, USA

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Organising Committee

The Conference Programme Committee is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Conference Programme Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, and so forth; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Conference Programme Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and overseeing the reviewing of abstracts submitted to the conference.

  • Mark Pegrum
    Mark Pegrum
    The University of Western Australia, Australia
  • Stephen Yiu-Wai Chu
    Stephen Yiu-Wai Chu
    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Yeewan Koon
    Yeewan Koon
    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Nicole Huang
    Nicole Huang
    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Lisa Lim
    Lisa Lim
    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • John Carroll
    John Carroll
    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Giorgio Biancorosso
    Giorgio Biancorosso
    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Umberto Ansaldo
    Umberto Ansaldo
    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    University of Rochester, USA
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

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Review Committee

The Review Committee will be announced here shortly.

IAFOR's peer review process, which involves both reciprocal review and the use of Review Committees, is overseen by conference Organising Committee members under the guidance of the Academic Governing Board. Review Committee members are established academics who hold PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields and who have previous peer review experience.

If you would like to apply to serve on the Heritage–HongKong2019 Review Committee, please visit our application page.

Apply to Join the Review Committee

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Documentary Strategies for Chinese Martial Arts as Living Heritage in Hong Kong: Perspectives from the Field
Keynote Presentation: Hing Chao

Chinese martial arts are a symbol for Chinese culture around the world and increasingly recognised as a form of intangible cultural heritage in Mainland China, Hong Kong and internationally. Yet this has not always been the case. Drawing upon the author’s first-hand experience as a leading researcher and advocate for Chinese martial arts in Hong Kong over the past decade, this paper begins with a short discussion on the history of Chinese martial arts in Hong Kong, how their role and public perception evolved over time, and the difficulties and challenges in preserving Chinese martial arts as a “living heritage” today.

Using Hakka martial arts as a case study, the author then discusses the process by which traditional martial arts are (re-)defined in light of current academic research, and the research methodologies therein. As a self-reflexive exercise, this discussion sheds critical light on the politics of “intangible cultural heritage” in Hong Kong, as well as the limitations and “constructedness” of the concept of “intangible cultural heritage” as defined by UNESCO. The concluding section details the research and documentary strategies for traditional martial arts in Hong Kong.

Read presenter biographies.

Traveling Exchanges: Theatres, Architectures, and Heritage
Keynote Presentation: Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren

This presentation, growing out of a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar Research Award as well as ongoing work in India and Hong Kong over the past 9 years, will focus on evolving models of performing heritage in South India related to patterns of cultural exchanges, labor, and migration across rapidly changing urban landscapes. Performance forms such as daveli, kalaripayattu, and kuttiyattam in Kerala and of theru koothu and silambattam in Tamil Nadu—as well as living history and interactive museums—act as social indices for evaluating a range of performing heritages. These performances, which travel across a variety of venues from temples, kalaris, homes, stages, museums, and related institutions, require communities of performers, cultural producers, curators, and researchers to form mutually reciprocal, and at times new, identities across the various cultural sites. These “traveling exchanges” then, in turn, lead to new forms of the performances. This work opens up to a critical spatial analysis that accounts for how the architectural and community sites of exchange operate within the South Indian context as well as to implications for re-thinking spatial practices of heritage in a transnational context. Amplified through the arts and new media practices, these Traveling Exchanges can help make heritage industries more economically viable, culturally visible, and socially empowering at the local and regional as well as international levels. In the second part of the presentation, we will discuss ideas for furthering more viable contexts for performing cultural heritages.

Read presenter biographies.

Image | Kalaripayattu performance in Kerala (Pixabay)

Escape from Heritage
Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall

In this talk, Donald E. Hall of the University of Rochester (New York) will discuss the city of his birth: Birmingham, Alabama (USA) and the legacy of racism and intolerance embodied in that southern American city.. While much of this conference will examine heritage as a potential wellspring of personal sustenance and cultural enrichment, many of us have also encountered aspects of heritage that make us deeply uncomfortable and that over time prove unsustainable. The heritage of a city, region, or nation can come to feel like a trap if its values and priorities are not compatible with the identities, beliefs, and needs of marginalized members of its citizenry. After discussing his personal journey out of a context of racial intolerance and religious conservatism, Professor Hall will pose questions to the audience for all to consider: What do we need from heritage? How and why do places become calcified by heritage and prove unable to embrace the changing needs of a diverse population? How do we gain a critical distance on the context in which we are born and what opportunities are there for self reinvention through flight? After speaking for 30 minutes Professor Hall will ask the audience to provide their own thoughts on heritage as a source of both pleasure and pain.

Read presenter biographies.

IAFOR Silk Road Initiative Information Session

As an organization, IAFOR’s mission is to promote international exchange, facilitate intercultural awareness, encourage interdisciplinary discussion, and generate and share new knowledge. In 2018, we are excited to launch a major new and ambitious international, intercultural and interdisciplinary research initiative which uses the silk road trade routes as a lens through which to study some of the world’s largest historical and contemporary geopolitical trends, shifts and exchanges.

IAFOR is headquartered in Japan, and the 2018 inauguration of this project aligns with the 150th Anniversary of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, when Japan opened its doors to the trade and ideas that would precipitate its rapid modernisation and its emergence as a global power. At a time when global trends can seem unpredictable, and futures fearful, the IAFOR Silk Road Initiative gives the opportunity to revisit the question of the impact of international relations from a long-term perspective.

This ambitious initiative will encourage individuals and institutions working across the world to support and undertake research centring on the contact between countries and regions in Europe and Asia – from Gibraltar to Japan – and the maritime routes that went beyond, into the South-East Continent and the Philippines, and later out into the Pacific Islands and the United States. The IAFOR Silk Road Initiative will be concerned with all aspects of this contact, and will examine both material and intellectual traces, as well as consequences.

For more information about the IAFOR Silk Road Initiative, click here.

Hing Chao
International Guoshu Association

Biography

Hing Chao is the executive director of International Guoshu Association, a leading independent research organization for Chinese martial studies. Since 2008 he has been the driving force in the research, documentation, and promotion of traditional Chinese martial arts in Hong Kong. He was the executive editor of the Journal of Chinese Martial Studies (JOCMS) from 2009 to 2012, and has been its deputy editor since it became a Chinese language publication in 2015. He co-founded the Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive with Sarah Kenderdine in 2013, which has since spawned three major kung fu exhibitions – 300 Years of Hakka Kung Fu: Digital Vision of Its Legacy and Future (2016), Kung Fu Motion (2017), and Lingnan Hung Kuen Across the Century: Kung Fu Narratives in Hong Kong Cinema and Community (2017), which he produced and co-curated.

Hing Chao is the author of several martial art books including《香港武林》(Hong Kong Martial Arts Community, 2014) and, together with his teacher Lam Chun Fai, authored Hung Kuen Fundamentals: Gung Gee Fok Fu Kuen (2013) and Hung Kuen Training: Chin Cheung and Fok Fu Kuen Deui Chak (2014). His most recent work on Chinese martial arts is 300 Years of Hakka Kung Fu (2016), which he co-edited with Jeffrey Shaw and Kenderdine.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Documentary Strategies for Chinese Martial Arts as Living Heritage in Hong Kong: Perspectives from the Field
Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren
Maryland Institute College of Art, USA & Folded Paper Dance and Theatre Limited, Hong Kong

Biography

Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, PhD, an Indian-American dance artist and scholar with a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University, is a Visiting Professor of Performance Studies and Theatre at the Maryland Institute of College Art. As a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar (2017-2018), she launched Traveling Exchanges: Theatres, Architectures, and Heritage, a research project that examines evolving models of performing heritage in South India and their implications for future work in the arts and heritage industries. As the Founding Artistic Director of Folded Paper Dance and Theatre Limited (Hong Kong/Seattle), she focuses her collaborative endeavors on building cross-cultural networks and new forms of dance laboratories. Recent projects include Traveling Architectures (Design Trust, 2017, Hong Kong), Water in Kerala: Art, Performance, Science (2015, Kochi and Kollam, India), and Pier Windows (2014, Hong Kong). The author of Hearing Difference: The Third Ear in Experimental, Deaf, and Multicultural Theatre, the lead-editor of The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game, and a former editor of Theatre Topics, she is currently writing on Traveling Exchanges, “ensembles of innovation,” and “The Komagata Maru Incident, Artistic Exchange, and Afro-Asian Futurisms.” Arts projects underway include Tracing Luminosity (a multi-media performance installation on Kuttiyattam, Kalaripayattu, and Daveli) and the Traveling Architectures Project (a set of interactive portable platforms that combine dance, storytelling, fashion, and new media with a special focus on engagements with disability communities).

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Traveling Exchanges: Theatres, Architectures, and Heritage
Mark Pegrum
The University of Western Australia, Australia

Biography

Mark Pegrum is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at The University of Western Australia, where he specialises in mobile learning and, more broadly, e-learning. His current research focuses on mobile technologies and digital literacies. His recent books include: Brave New Classrooms: Democratic Education and the Internet (co-edited with Joe Lockard; Peter Lang, 2007); From Blogs to Bombs: The Future of Digital Technologies in Education (UWA Publishing, 2009); Digital Literacies (co-authored with Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly; Pearson/Routledge, 2013); and Mobile Learning: Languages, Literacies and Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, a member of the Editorial Boards of Language Learning & Technology and System, and a member of the Review Panel of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning. He teaches in Perth, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Featured Presentation (2018) | Presentation information will be added here shortly.
Donald E. Hall
University of Rochester, USA

Biography

Donald E. Hall is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA. Prior to moving to Rochester, he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Dean Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Escape from Heritage
Mark Pegrum
The University of Western Australia, Australia

Biography

Mark Pegrum is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at The University of Western Australia, where he specialises in mobile learning and, more broadly, e-learning. His current research focuses on mobile technologies and digital literacies. His recent books include: Brave New Classrooms: Democratic Education and the Internet (co-edited with Joe Lockard; Peter Lang, 2007); From Blogs to Bombs: The Future of Digital Technologies in Education (UWA Publishing, 2009); Digital Literacies (co-authored with Gavin Dudeney and Nicky Hockly; Pearson/Routledge, 2013); and Mobile Learning: Languages, Literacies and Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, a member of the Editorial Boards of Language Learning & Technology and System, and a member of the Review Panel of the International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning. He teaches in Perth, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Featured Presentation (2018) | Presentation information will be added here shortly.
Stephen Yiu-Wai Chu
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Biography

Stephen Yiu-Wai Chu is Professor and Director of Hong Kong Studies Programme, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on postcolonialism, globalisation and Hong Kong culture. He has published more than 20 books, including Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013), Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), edited volume Hong Kong Culture and Society in the New Millennium: Hong Kong as Method (Singapore: Springer, 2017) and Found in Transition: Hong Kong Studies in the Age of China (Albany: SUNY Press, forthcoming in 2018). He is also the chief editor of two Chinese-language book series on Hong Kong published by Chung Hwa Book Co.: “Cultural Hong Kong” and “Hong Kong Popular Lyricists.”

Yeewan Koon
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Biography

Dr Koon teaches Chinese and Japanese art history. She was a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before taking up her position at the University of Hong Kong. Her primary research area is Ming and Qing paintings with an interest in modern and contemporary art in Hong Kong. Her book, A Defiant Brush: Su Renshan and the Politics of Painting in Guangdong (2013) traces the connections between art worlds and artists in the early 19th century and how an unusual painter responded to the political shifts of a place besieged by war and violence. She is the recipient of several research awards including a RGC grant (2014) for her new book project on the “self-knowing copy” in Chinese art, and a Henry Luce/ACLS fellowship in China Studies Collaborative Reading Workshop (2015).

Nicole Huang
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Biography

Professor Nicole Huang received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles, and taught at the University of Wisconsin, Madison for 17 years before joining the University of Hong Kong recently. Her early work focused on literary and visual manifestations of human agencies through extraordinary times, including a monograph titled Women, War, Domesticity: Shanghai Literature and Popular Culture of the 1940s (Leiden, 2005) and an edited volume titled Written on Water: A Collection of Essays by Eileen Chang (New York, 2005). Her recent work engages visual and auditory culture of contemporary China, with a forthcoming book called Late Mao Soundscapes: Auditory Culture and Daily Practice of 1970s China. Her current research projects include a book-length study of the social use of photographic portraiture in Mao-era China and a monograph that highlights the “transnational” as it informs a body of Chinese language narratives across a century of violence, upheavals, and massive exodus. At the University of Hong Kong, Professor Huang will be teaching a range of courses in literature, film, media culture, and critical theory.

Lisa Lim
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Biography

Lisa Lim is Associate Professor and Head of the School of English at The University of Hong Kong, having worked previously at the National University of Singapore and the University of Amsterdam. Her current research interests centre around New Englishes, especially postcolonial Asian varieties in multilingual ecologies, such as Singapore and Hong Kong; issues of language shift, endangerment, revitalisation, and post-vernacular linguistic and cultural vitality in minority and endangered language communities, such as the Peranakans in Singapore and the Malays of Sri Lanka; and the sociolinguistics of globalisation, with interests in mobility, urban multiculturalism, computer-mediated communication, and their impact on language contact. Recent publications include Languages in Contact (Cambridge University Press, 2016, co-authored with Umberto Ansaldo), and The Multilingual Citizen (Multilingual Matters, 2018, co-edited). She is founding co-editor (with Umberto Ansaldo) of the journal Language Ecology, and serves on several editorial boards, including Language, Culture and Curriculum, and the Mouton book series ‘Dialects of English’. Passionately committed to knowledge transfer, she developed the online resource LinguisticMinorities.hk, for which she won the HKU Faculty of Arts’ Knowledge Exchange Award 2014, and she is the ‘Language Matters’ columnist for Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post’s Sunday Post Magazine (see www.scmp.com/author/lisa-lim). While in her younger days she engaged in dance and yoga and never in martial arts, she is putting into practice her belief in lifelong learning and new challenges, and has recently become addicted to Muay Thai. In January 2019, she will be Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney.

John Carroll
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Biography

John M. Carroll is Professor of History and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches courses on Hong Kong history, British imperial history, and museums and history. Raised and educated in Hong Kong, he received his BA from Oberlin College, his MA from the University of Iowa, and his PhD from Harvard University. He has also taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the College of William and Mary, and Saint Louis University. Carroll is the author of Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong (Harvard University Press, 2005) and A Concise History of Hong Kong (Rowman & Littlefield/Hong Kong University Press, 2007), and co-editor (with Chi-kwan Mark) of Critical Readings on the Modern History of Hong Kong (Brill, 2015) and (with Priscilla Roberts) Hong Kong and the Cold War (Hong Kong University Press, 2017). He has published articles in Modern Asian Studies, Twentieth-Century China, Chinese Historical Review, and China Information. His research interests include the history of Hong Kong and encounters between China and the West. He is currently completing two books on the British in China during the Canton trade period and has recently begun a new research project on tourism in Hong Kong from the late 1940s to 1997.

Giorgio Biancorosso
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Biography

Giorgio Biancorosso is Associate Professor of Music and Director of the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, The University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Situated Listening: The Sound of Absorption in Classical Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2016) and is presently working on a monograph on music and parody in Hong Kong cinema. His work on the history and theory of listening practices reflects a long-standing interest in musical aesthetics, film music, and the history of global cinema. Biancorosso studied music history and film studies at the University of Rome and King's College, London, before moving to Princeton University, where he obtained a PhD in musicology in 2001. Having taught at Northwestern University in 2000-01, in 2001-2003 he was a Mellon Fellow in Music at the Society of Fellows at Columbia University. Aside from film music, film criticism, and musical aesthetics, his interests include musical dramaturgy and the psychology of music. Biancorosso is also active in Hong Kong as a programmer and curator. He is the Chairman of the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble and a member of the Programme Committee of the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Umberto Ansaldo
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Biography

Umberto Ansaldo started his academic path as a student of Chinese language and literature at the University of Venice, Italy, and went on to earn a PhD in linguistics from the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Since then he has been conducting research on languages of East, South, and Southeast Asia with a focus on socio-historical and typological processes. He has also published and edited a number of volumes and articles on Pidgin and Creole languages, their evolution and their historiography. Between 2005 and 2010 Professor Ansaldo led a project that resulted in a comprehensive description and documentation of an endangered contact language known as Sri Lanka Malay. In 2017 he launched the journal Language Ecology with John Benjamins.

In the past two decades Professor Ansaldo has taught at the National University of Singapore, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Hong Kong, where he now heads the School of Humanities. Besides linguistics he has taught courses on modern Asia, conflict studies, and self-defence, and his most recent interest is in higher education management and academic leadership. In July 2018 he will take up a new post as Head of the School of Literature, Arts and Media (SLAM) at the University of Sydney to focus primarily on these aspects of academia.

Outside of work, Umberto is a keen practitioner of martial arts, which he has studied for over 2 decades. He also travels as frequently as possible, occasionally trying to learn a new language, most recently Japanese.

Donald E. Hall
University of Rochester, USA

Biography

Donald E. Hall is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA. Prior to moving to Rochester, he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Dean Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Escape from Heritage
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.

He is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

A black belt in judo, he is married with two children, and lives in Japan.