Koichi & Shane the 5Th Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Conference

Dear ACMS members,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to 2016 with various research activities planned for our research cluster this year. Here are some of the things that are being planned:

Monash Asia Institute is hosting a seminar on cultural diplomacy by internationally renowned cultural theorist Raj Isar from the American University of Paris in April. ACMS will host a networking lunch event with Raj and researchers from Monash on the 18th of April. I will circulate the detail nearer the time.

ACMS will continue to organize the postgraduate workshops which had good feedback from our HDR students last year. The first one of these will take place in April. The theme is likely to be on social media research. More details to follow.

A research seminar with our HDR student Ervin Cabalquinto on social/mobile media will take place in May. If your research is in the related field and would like to share your ideas too, please let me know.

There are a few conference opportunities in Asia this year that members of ACMS are involved with:

David Holmes – Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) 27-29 Oct in Indonesia

Koichi & Shane– the 5th Inter-Asia popular music studies conference. Koichi – The 2017 International Conference on ‘Trans-Asia Human Mobilities and Encounters Exchange, Commodification and Sustainability’ in Bankok (this event is convened by Monash Asia Institute)

Xin and Justin – The Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Conference in June in Japan (we organized a panel on cultural economy and Chinese modernity) Carolyn Stevens – AAS Conference in Japan (Panel 'Public Hopes, Private Dreams: Utopic Visions in Modern Japan' chaired by Prof Christine Yano, University of Hawai'i. Carolyn’s paper will be called 'Tokyo, London, New York: Yoko Ono's Art as Transnational Utopia'.

This year the ICA (international communication association) conference is also going to be hosted in Japan in June. And for those working more towards the cultural studies end, the 2016 International Conference on Cultural Policy Research will be a major event to be hosted by Sookmyung Women’s University in July in Seoul (South Korea).

Please let me know if you know of or are planning attending conferences in Asia this year. I will circulate within the cluster. Some of our HDR students might be interested in attending these as well.

The School of Media, Film and Journalism (MFJ) has won a FOCUS bid to setup a new research unit on Culture Media Economy (CME). There is a potential Asian strand under CME, I welcome any suggestions on research interests that can be linked to CME's research themes. Meanwhile, please check out CME’s weblink. It is still under construction but gives you a sense of the kinds of research activities it has http://milkklim.wix.com/cme2

Some administrative changes: This year I have taken up the coordinator role when Olivia is on leave. If you have any enquiries regarding ACMS activities please direct them to me - Xin Gu ( [email protected]).

Julien Leyre has kindly offered his expertise in helping me with the coordination role especially with engaging our HDR students in ACMS activities. Julien will also help with organizing workshops and seminars this year in order to enhance level of participation by members. Julien can be contacted via [email protected]

The member’s page of The Asian Cultural and Media Studies Research Cluster (ACMS) can be found below. And if you know of anyone who might be interested in joining the cluster, please ask them to get in touch via the link on the webpage or to me directly. http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mai/research-cluster-of-asian-media-and-cultural-studies/ I hope I’ve covered most of the things here. And I will keep updating you with what’s happening within the ACMS cluster.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

Xin Gu