Asian Currents:

AAS-in-Asia 2027 is the annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies held outside North America. Hosted by Sunway University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in Bandar Sunway, Malaysia, the conference brings together hundreds of scholars, researchers, educators and students from across Asia and the world.

The conference provides a premier platform for interdisciplinary dialogue, cross-regional exchange and the advancement of knowledge on Asia's diverse societies, cultures, histories and futures. Sessions span humanities, social sciences, area studies and interdisciplinary fields.

At AAS-in-Asia 2027 in Kuala Lumpur, we invite scholars to consider Asian Currents through interconnected ideas of shifting tides, and recasting terrains. Currents evoke movement and circulation of peoples, ideas, commodities, technologies, languages, beliefs, artistic practices, and political imaginaries across and beyond Asia. Shifting tides point to moments of transformation, as geopolitical realignments, technological change, environmental pressures, economic restructuring, and evolving cultural and educational networks reshape relationships within the region and the world. Recasting terrains invites us to reconsider the intellectual, social, cultural, political, and environmental landscapes through which Asia has been understood, and to ask how inherited frameworks might be reinterpreted, challenged, or reimagined in response to changing realities.

The conference invites reflection on both enduring and emerging currents: how they travel, where they converge, whose voices and knowledge they carry, and how they reshape communities across local, regional, and global contexts. At the same time, Asia is experiencing shifting tides. Asian societies, economies, knowledge systems, and cultural traditions are not simply responding to transformations but are actively participating in shaping them. Economic realignments, technological developments, changing political relationships, transnational education, cultural movements, and new forms of regional cooperation invite us to examine Asia as a region from which new global directions are emerging. These transformations also require us to think critically about the terrains through which Asia is interpreted. Attention to the Global South, decolonial approaches, and diverse Asian intellectual traditions encourages scholars to question frameworks that have historically positioned Asia primarily through concepts developed elsewhere. Recasting these terrains does not mean rejecting the past, but rather reconsidering how inherited forms of knowledge, governance, social organisation, environmental stewardship, and cultural expression speak to contemporary challenges.