Program
Program
IACS 2025 will take place at the Twin Lotus Hotel in Nakhon Si Thammarat city, which features rooms, halls, restaurants, and a shuttle service to the airport. The hotel is 15 kilometers from Nakhon Si Thammarat International Airport and 30 kilometers from Walailak University. It is conveniently located on Phatthanakan Khukwang Road, one of the city’s main roads in the new business district, with access to local transportation.
Please take a look at the main program for the
2025 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference here (download and zoom in for better visibility).
If you have any questions, just drop us an email!
Keynote Session
The IACS 2025 organizing committee is pleased to announce the three keynote speakers for the
2025 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference.
Gridthiya Gaweewong
We are honored to open IACS 2025 with a keynote address by Gridthiya Gaweewong, a prominent Thai curator based at the Jim Thompson Art Centre in Bangkok and Artistic Director of the recent Thailand Biennale 2023. In her talk, titled “Exhibition as Method: Rethinking the Cartography of Trans-Asia,” she draws on her curatorial practice to reflect on the role of art exhibitions in fostering geo-social connections—exploring how exhibitions, archives, and aesthetic practices can serve as tools for translocal solidarity, historical reparation, and radical imagination. This opening session sets the tone for the conference theme, Geo-Social Connection, grounding it in visual and cultural practices that traverse borders while remaining deeply rooted in local experience.
Prathama Banerjee
Prathama Banerjee is Professor of History and Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi, India, and the author of Politics of Time: “Primitives” and History-Writing in a Colonial Society (Oxford UP, 2009) and Elementary Aspects of the Political: Histories from the Global South (Duke UP, 2020).
Her talk, titled “Time, Technology, and the Limits of Decolonization,” centers on the question of how to decolonize the conception and imagination of technology as it is given to us in the modern world. Unlike the social sciences and humanities, the fields of science and technology have so far largely resisted decolonial and postcolonial critique.
Drawing on India’s postcolonial experience and referencing Asian and African histories of technological thinking, Prathama argues that decolonizing technology requires us to open up the “black box” of its structure, design, content, and intent.
Wendy Matsumura
Wendy Matsumura is Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego, where she teaches courses on the Japanese empire and Okinawa. She is the author of The Limits of Okinawa: Japanese Capitalism, Living Labor, and Theorizations of Community (Duke UP, 2015) and Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan’s Empire (Duke UP, 2024).
Her talk, titled “Expropriated Life, Degraded Nature, and Class Struggle Along Okinawa’s Fenceline,” explores how Okinawa has been transformed into a site of systematic expropriation and ecological degradation with far-reaching global implications. Moving beyond the dominant “empire of bases” framework, Matsumura centers acts of refusal and solidarity that stretch the boundaries of prevailing political and scholarly categories. In the face of genocidal, ecocidal, and scholasticidal violence—now deeply embedded in global capitalism—her talk returns us to an age-old yet urgent question: What is to be done?
Parallel Sessions/Plenary Sessions
Roundtable Discussion
Grand Plenary: The 70th Anniversary of the Bandung Conference
As 2025 marks the 70th anniversary of the First Afro-Asian Conference—commonly known as the Bandung Conference—we propose to commemorate this historic moment through the IACS 2025 conference theme, “Geo-Social Connection: The Continuing Journey of Critical Inquiry.” This theme reaffirms a spirit of interconnectedness and raises questions that remain relevant to the legacy of Bandung. In reviving the Spirit of Bandung, this plenary panel addresses the complex and multifaceted realities of Asian publics. It calls for deeper exploration of how cultural, political, and social dynamics intersect within and beyond communities. Most importantly, the session underscores the ongoing importance of critical methods and practices that foster solidarity among peoples of the Global South/Third World.
Book Launch and Film Screening
Book Launches & Film Screenings | July 23–24
For those interested in participating, please review the book descriptions and film screening venues in advance. Early preparation will help ensure smooth transportation arrangements and allow for more meaningful engagement with these events.
Particularly the film screenings, which will be held at Walailak University, require pre-registration at the conference registration desk (100 seats per day). A shuttle service will depart from Twin Lotus Hotel at 13:20 and return at 16:20 on both days.
NIGHT & DAY TRIPS
NAKHON CITY NIGHT TOUR (Night Tours Are Fully Booked)
Dates: 22–23 July 2025, 6:30–9:30 PM (Free of charge, 45 seats per night)
Explore the timeless charm of Nakhon Si Thammarat after dark. This special evening tour, supported by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), showcases the city’s vibrant cultural life.
ONE-DAY FIELD TRIP
Date: 26 July 2025, 8:00 AM–4:00 PM (Fee: 500 Baht per person, 30 seats available)
Chumchon Commoning: Memory and Heritage in Sichon
Visit Sichon District to learn how communities sustain and reinvent heritage. Based on three years of GSCR ethnographic research, this trip offers an immersive experience of intergenerational, participatory knowledge-making.
https://docs.google.com/forms/chumchoncommoningonedayfieldtrip
Book Launch & Roundtable Discussion
Made in Thailand:
Studies in Thai Popular Music
by Viriya Sawangchot, Senior Researcher, Center of Geosocial and Cultural Research for Sustainable Development, Walailak University, Thailand July 23 11.10-12.40 (Bongkotrat 1, Twin Lotus)
This open roundtable brings together contributors to this volume, scholars involved in other Asia-themed titles from Routledge’s Global Popular Music series, and emerging voices in Asian popular music studies. It offers a space for generative dialogue on the evolving field—mapping new connections, identifying emerging questions, and imagining shared intellectual futures across and beyond the region. The session will explore how can we develop methodologies attentive to both local specificity and transnational cultural circulation? And what future directions might popular music studies in Asia take?
For more information about this book, please link to
https://www.routledge.com/Made-in-Thailand-Studies-in-Popular-Music/Sawangchot/p/book/9780367703103
Communication against Capital: Red Enlightenment at the Dawn of Indonesia
by Rianne Subijanto, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Baruch College, The City University of New York.
July 24 13.30-15.30 ( Bongkotrat 3, Twin Lotus)
The roundtable will feature the author in conversation with six scholars—both junior and senior—working across Inter-Asia cultural studies, communication, and political history. Together, they will reflect on how the legacy of the pergerakan merah continues to resonate with contemporary movements confronting colonial expropriation, capitalist dispossession, and ecological crisis. Framing revolutionary communication as both a historical and ongoing struggle, this session invites a critical rethinking of geo-social resistance across time and space.
For more information about this book, please link to
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book-listing/?q=%22Rianne%20Subijanto%22
Film Screening + Q&A Sessions
July 23 & July 24, 2025 | 2.00 am - 4.00.am, Srithammarat Auditorium, AD Building, WU
Ghost Fleet (2019)
July 23, 2025
Runtime: 90 minutes
Directed by: Shannon Service & Jeffrey Waldron
Produced by: Vulcan Productions
This documentary follows Patima Tungpuchayakul, a Thai anti-trafficking activist and co-founder of LPN, as she undertakes a dangerous mission to rescue enslaved fishermen across Southeast Asia. The film exposes the hidden networks of exploitation in Thailand’s maritime sector and the global seafood industry’s complicity in labor abuse.
Q&A Session:
Following the screening, there will be a discussion with Patima Tungpuchayakul, whose work inspired the film, and Sompong Srakaew, founder and director of the Labour Protection Network.
Watch the trailer:
Paper Airplane (2024)
July 24, 2025
Runtime: 74 minutes
Directed by: Moses Marks
Produced by: Light & Shadow Media Production 2024
Set in the conflict-ridden Karen State of Myanmar, Paper Airplane follows the journey of Naw Mi, a young Karen girl, alongside her mother and younger brother, as they flee escalating violence and seek refuge in a border camp. The film intimately portrays the trauma of displacement and the resilience required to navigate life in exile. Through Naw Mi’s perspective, the documentary captures the emotional texture of statelessness, forced migration, and the fragile hope of rebuilding.
Q&A Session:
A post-screening discussion will be held with Moses Marks, the film’s director.
Watch the trailer:
