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The Icelandic Centre for Asian Studies was formally founded on 16 December 2005 by the University of Akureyri and the University of Iceland. As the name of the Centre suggests, its role is to initiate and coordinate research and education concerning the Asian region. Until the foundation of ASIS, there has been no particular venue to conduct Asian research and studies in Iceland, which has had the unfortunate consequence that the region has gained scarce attention by Iceland-based scholars. A seminal task of ASIS is to change this fact. Asia is not as distant from Iceland as it used to be. Globalization and the ease and speed of modern transportation and communication brings the region straight into our own backyard – or ours into theirs. The chief mission of ASIS is to promote understanding of the Asian region among Icelandic scholars, professionals and public in order to be better capable of taking care of our ever-expanding, increasingly common backyard. One of the Centre’s first and most important projects is to plan and coordinate the two universities’ mutual B.A. programme in East-Asian studies. The programme, which will formally commence in 2007, will combine the Japanese minor currently offered at the University of Iceland and the courses in Chinese studies launched by the University of Akureyri in the spring semester of 2006. Visiting lecturers from neighbouring Scandinavian and European universities will complement these courses to make the first programme in East-Asian studies in Iceland a strong and attractive one. The contact person at the Icelandic Centre for Asian Studies is Geir Sigurdsson, Director. E-mail: geirs@unak.is, Phone: (+354) 4608574 Researchers: Geir Sigurðsson (b. 1969) has a PhD from the University of Hawaii. He focuses in particular on Chinese philosophy, Chinese religions and education in contemporary China. Homepage: http://stefania.unak.is/stefania/strammi.asp?starfsm=geirsig His most recent publications are “‘Initiating While not Proceeding to the End’: A Confucian Response to Indoctrination” (forthcoming in Educations and Their Purposes: A Philosophical Dialogue Among Cultures, 2007) and “Broadening the Way: On Commensurability Between Derrida’s philosophy and Chinese Philosophical Narratives” (in Icelandic, with Ralph Weber, in Hugur, Journal of the Icelandic Philosophical Society 17, 2005). Jóhann Páll Árnason (b. 1940) has recently retired from his professorship at the Latrobe University in Sydney, Australia, and taken recidency in Akureyri, Iceland. He has written extensively on the transformation of Japan throughout modernity. His publications include Japanese Encounters with Postmodernity (1996), The Peripheral Centre: Essays on Japanese History and Civilizations (2002), Eurasian Transformations, Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries: Crystallizations, Divergences, Renaissances (with Bjorn Wittrock, 2003) and Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions (2004).
http://www.hug.hi.is/page/asiuver
Keywords: Asia Area Studies, Iceland, Nordic Perspective, Research Institute,
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