IAFOR > The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities (ACAH) > ACAH2025 > Programme

Programme

This page provides details of featured presentations, the conference schedule and other programming. For more information about presenters, please visit the Speakers page.

Conference Outline

Sunday, May 11, 2025Monday, May 12, 2025Tuesday, May 13, 2025Wednesday, May 14, 2025Thursday, May 15, 2025Friday, May 16, 2025

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

14:10-15:10: Conference Check-in

15:10-15:55: Pre-Conference Information Session
Melina Neophytou, IAFOR, Japan
Matthew Chima, IAFOR, Japan

This session provides an overview of what to expect at the conference, including guidance on preparing your presentation, publishing opportunities, and ways to engage with IAFOR. You will receive practical tips on setting up your presentation, understanding your role at the conference, including how to attract a larger audience to your session. We will also outline the publishing opportunities available, including how to submit your work to be included in the Conference Proceedings or IAFOR Journals. This session also offers a chance to explore the opportunities for deeper engagement, whether through networking with fellow delegates or getting involved more with IAFOR. Join us, and get ready to present, publish, and participate.

16:00-17:00: Pre-Conference Cultural Event: Kimono Workshop
This is a free event open to all registered delegates
Delegates are invited to a special session focusing on the art of kimono dressing, featuring live demonstrations by kimono instructor Satoko Yamada. – TBA

Location: The Public Red Akasaka, Tokyo

18:00-20:00: Welcome Reception | The Public Red Akasaka
This is a free event open to all registered delegates

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

11:30-12:30: Conference Check-in | Main Room (4F)

12:30-12:35: Announcements | Main Room (4F) & Online

12:35-13:00: Welcome Addresses & Recognition of IAFOR Scholarship Winners | Main Room (4F) & Online
Joseph Haldane, IAFOR, Japan

13:00-14:30: Panel Presentation | Main Room (4F) & Online

14:30-14:50: Coffee Break

14:50-15:15: Keynote Presentation | Orion Hall (5F)
15:15-15:40: Q & A Session | Orion Hall (5F)

15:45-16:10: Keynote Presentation | Orion Hall (5F)
16:10-16:25: Q & A Session | Orion Hall (5F)

16:25-16:40: Conference Photograph

16:40-17:00: Extended Coffee Break | Subaru (5F)

17:00-18:00: Conference Poster Session 1 | Orion Hall (5F)

19:00-21:00: Conference Dinner | Shunju Tameikesanno
This is a ticketed event

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

09:15-09:45: Conference Check-in | Subaru Room (5F)

09:45-10:45: Panel Presentation | Orion Hall (5F) & Online

10:45-11:00: Coffee Break

11:00-12:30: The Forum | Orion Hall (5F)

12:30-14:00: Lunch Break

14:00-15:00: Haiku Workshop | Orion Hall (5F)
Hana Fujimoto, Haiku International Association, Japan
Emiko Miyashita, Haiku International Association, Japan

15:00-15:30: Extended Coffee Break | Subaru (5F)

15:30-16:30: Conference Poster Session 2 | Orion Hall (5F)

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

08:30-09:30: Conference Check-in (7F)

09:30-11:10: Onsite Parallel Session 1

11:10-11:25: Coffee Break

11:25-12:40: Onsite Parallel Session 2

12:40-12:55: Coffee Break

12:55-14:35: Onsite Parallel Session 3

14:35-14:50: Coffee Break

14:50-16:30: Onsite Parallel Session 4

16:30-16:45: Coffee Break

16:45-18:25: Onsite Parallel Session 5

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

08:30-09:30: Conference Check-in (7F)

09:30-11:10: Onsite Parallel Session 1

11:10-11:25: Coffee Break

11:25-12:40: Onsite Parallel Session 2

12:40-12:55: Coffee Break

12:55-14:35: Onsite Parallel Session 3

14:35-14:50: Coffee Break

14:50-16:30: Onsite Parallel Session 4

16:35-16:50: Onsite Closing Session | Room 701 (7F)

Location: Online via Zoom

08:55-09:00: Message from IAFOR

09:00-09:40: Keynote Presentation | Online

09:40-11:20: Online Parallel Session 1

11:20-11:30: Break

11:30-13:10: Online Parallel Session 2

13:10-13:20: Break

13:20-15:00: Online Parallel Session 3

15:00-15:10: Break

15:10-16:50: Online Parallel Session 4

16:50-17:00: Closing Message from IAFOR

The above schedule may be subject to change.

Accepted Presentations

One of the greatest strengths of IAFOR’s international conferences is their international and intercultural diversity.
As of March 11, 2025, ACAH2025 has received over 580 submissions from over 65 countries and territories - including: Philippines, United States, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, and Singapore.

View Accepted Presentations

Featured Presentations

To be announced

  • Swimming Together: World-Making with Everyday Practices
    Swimming Together: World-Making with Everyday Practices
    Keynote Presentation: Rebecca Olive
  • Turning the Faucet to Full: Expanding the Use of Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) in Asian Humanities, Social Science, and Cultural Studies Research
    Turning the Faucet to Full: Expanding the Use of Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) in Asian Humanities, Social Science, and Cultural Studies Research
    Keynote Presentation: Thomas G. Endres

Featured Speakers

  • Umberto Ansaldo
    Umberto Ansaldo
    VinUniversity, Vietnam
  • Jun Arima
    Jun Arima
    University of Tokyo, Japan
  • Thomas G. Endres
    Thomas G. Endres
    University of Northern Colorado, United States
  • Kiichi Fujiwara
    Kiichi Fujiwara
    Juntendo University, Japan
  • Emiko Miyashita
    Emiko Miyashita
    Haiku International Association, Japan
  • Rebecca Olive
    Rebecca Olive
    Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia

Conference Programme

The draft version of the Conference Programme will be available online on April 07, 2025. All registered delegates will be notified of this publication by email.

*Please be aware that the above schedule may be subject to change.

Important Information Emails

All registered attendees will receive an Important Information email and updates in the run-up to the conference. Please check your email inbox for something from "iafor.org". If you can not find these emails in your normal inbox, it is worth checking in your spam or junk mail folders as many programs filter out emails this way. If these did end up in one of these folders, please add the address to your acceptable senders' folder by whatever method your email program can do this.

Previous Programming

View details of programming for past ACAH conferences via the links below.

ACAH2024 ACAH2023 ACAH2022
ACAH2021 ACAH2020 ACAH2019
ACAH2018 ACAH2017 ACAH2016
ACAH2015 ACAH2014 ACAH2013
ACAH2012 ACAH2011 ACAH2010
Swimming Together: World-Making with Everyday Practices
Keynote Presentation: Rebecca Olive

As temperatures rise, biodiversity decreases, and conflicts escalate, the pressing need for us to find new ways to live with the world is well established. However, the challenge of the enduring ideology of human exceptionalism over nature continues to dominate so much of the thinking that guides policies, governance, and decision making at individual, local, national, and international levels. Challenging ideologies is easy when it is in theory, but changing them is more difficult in practice. Colonial and capitalist sorceries (Pignarre and Stengers, 2011) have established deep infrastructures of the heart (Slater, In Press), that alienate us from each other, making the mobilisation necessary for change a difficult task to achieve.

Drawing on ecofeminist, posthuman, and First Nations theories and scholarship, this presentation explores how everyday practices can be powerful in helping us feel human-ecological relationships in meaningful, consequential ways. With a focus on swimming, it explores how sports and physical activities offer an unexpected way to activate more ecological ethics of planetary care. Through swimming, we become one with the water and feel our interconnected vulnerability – we are part of the food chain, we absorb the pollution, we swim with multiple ancestors, we share the stories of what we see and feel. In this way, swimming, and other sports, can act as a form of reorientation to the possibilities of our shared world.

Read presenter's biography
Turning the Faucet to Full: Expanding the Use of Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) in Asian Humanities, Social Science, and Cultural Studies Research
Keynote Presentation: Thomas G. Endres

Humans are storytellers. Therefore, scholars – whether they be from the arts and humanities, the social sciences, or cultural studies – need the means to assess and interpret the symbolic narratives found within communities. Over the past two decades, a faucet has been turned on low, and a small stream of Asian scholars have started to use Ernest Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) as their theory and method of choice. The flow of research – examining heroes, villains, settings, and plotlines – has been slow but steady; now, in this address, SCT expert Thomas G. Endres plans to turn the faucet to full. In sharing both the body of work done throughout Asia and his own studies, which range from rhetorical analysis to quantitative research, both emerging and established scholars can assess SCT’s utility as an insightful tool. Hopefully the steady stream of this theoretical framework will expand, as SCT is further applied across a variety of Asian Pacific publications and presentations.

Read presenter's biography
Umberto Ansaldo
VinUniversity, Vietnam

Biography

Professor Umberto Ansaldo is currently Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at VinUniversity, Vietnam. He previously served as Head of the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University, Australia from 2021 through 2023, Head of the School of Literature, Art and Media at the University of Sydney, Australia from 2018 through 2020, and Head of the School of Humanities at HKU, where he taught from 2009 to 2018.

Professor Ansaldo’s disciplinary roots are in linguistics, specifically in the study of language contact, linguistic typology, and language documentation. He is the author of four books to date (with CUP, OUP, Routledge, and Stockholm University Press), has edited or co-edited 11 volumes and journal special collections, and has authored multiple journal articles and book chapters. His most recent publication is the co-editorship of The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages (Routledge, 2021).

At HKU, Professor Ansaldo led the Humanities Area of Inquiry on the Common Core Curriculum Committee in HKU’s major revision of its curriculum (2010-2013), a time when, along with the University of Melbourne, Australia, HKU was leading in reimagining undergraduate curricula. As Chair of Linguistics, he was instrumental in establishing the Department within the top ten programmes in Linguistics (QS rankings), with the programme ranking at number one in Hong Kong.

At the University of Sydney, Professor Ansaldo sat on the University Executive Research Committee and led his School through a transformative period in terms of curriculum innovation and research engagement. He was in charge of overseeing the incorporation of the Sydney College of the Arts into the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

Professor Ansaldo has secured competitive research grants and leveraged industry funding for the advancement of the humanities and social sciences throughout his career. One of his proudest achievements was his role in securing financial support to develop and host an exhibition on language and the brain, the ‘Talking Brains’ exhibition at the CosmoCaixa in Barcelona, Spain in 2017. This type of engagement and championing of the Humanities is what Umberto is most passionate about.

Professor Ansaldo has lived and worked in Sweden, The Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong. and speaks seven languages, including Mandarin. He is well-acquainted with Asia and has conducted fieldwork in Muslim communities of the Indian Ocean, and has developed strong international networks in Southeast Asia, Japan, and Europe.

Panel Presentation (2025) | Peace Education in Times of Conflict

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2024) | Can Today’s Universities Contribute to a Better Future?
Jun Arima
University of Tokyo, Japan

Biography

Professor Jun Arima is the President of IAFOR, and the senior academic officer of the organisation. In this role, Professor Arima is the Honorary Chair of the International Academic Advisory Board, as well as both the Academic Governing Board and its Executive Committee. He also sits on the IAFOR Board of Directors.

Jun Arima was formerly Director General of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), UK from 2011 to 2015 and Special Advisor on Global Environmental Affairs for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan, from 2011 to 2015. He has previously held various international energy/environment-related positions, including: Head of Division, Country Studies, International Energy Agency (IEA); Director, International Affairs Division, Agency of Natural Resources and Energy, METI; and Deputy Director General for Environmental Affairs at METI’s Industrial Science and Technology Policy and Environment Bureau. In the COP (UN Convention on Climate Change) 14, 15 and 16, he was Japanese Chief Negotiator for AWG-KP.

Since 2015 Jun Arima has been a Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan, where he teaches Energy Security, International Energy Governance, and Environmental Policies in the Graduate School of Public Policy. (GraSPP). He is also currently a Consulting Fellow at the Japanese Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI). He is also Executive Senior Fellow at the 21st Century Public Policy Institute, Principal Researcher at the International Environmental and Economic Institute (IEEI), Distinguished Senior Policy Fellow, at the Asia Pacific Institute of Research (APIR), Senior Policy Fellow on Energy and Environment, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), and was the Lead Author, the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC).

Panel Presentation (2025) | Peace Education in Times of Conflict

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2022) | Climate Change, Energy Security and the Ukraine War
Thomas G. Endres
University of Northern Colorado, United States

Biography

Dr Thomas G. Endres is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, United States, where he coordinates the university’s Communication Studies Extended Campus online degree completion program and teaches for the university's honours and leadership programs. In a career marked primarily by administrative (chair or director) responsibilities, Dr Endres found time to conduct research in the areas of pedagogy, popular culture, and the use of story to create rhetorical communities. He has published several dozen refereed articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, and an encyclopaedia entry, applying Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory to the study of such communities: examining diverse collectives such as single mothers, father-daughter dyads, laity in the Catholic church, and tattooed people. He is author and photographer of two books: ‘Sturgis Stories: Celebrating the People of the World’s Largest Motorcycle Rally’ and ‘My Costume, Myself: Celebrating Stories of Cosplay and Beyond,’ and co-author with Deanna D. Sellnow on Sage's 4th edition of ‘The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture: Considering Mediated Texts.’ He has delivered more than 250 presentations, workshops, and keynote addresses across the United States and abroad, including presentations in Austria, China, the Czech Republic, Japan, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. He lives in Greeley, Colorado, with his wife, Maki Notohara Endres.

Keynote Presentation (2025) | Turning the Faucet to Full: Expanding the Use of Bormann's Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) in Asian Humanities, Social Science, and Cultural Studies Research
Kiichi Fujiwara
Juntendo University, Japan

Biography

Kiichi Fujiwara is a Professor in the Graduate School of International Liberal Arts at Juntendo University and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, Japan. He taught International Politics at the Graduate Schools of Law and Politics and the Graduate School of Public Policy until 2022. Professor Fujiwara founded the Institute for Future Initiatives at the University of Tokyo, a university think-tank that engages in multidisciplinary approaches to global challenges. His publications include Remembering the War (2001), A Democratic Empire (2002), Is There Really a Just War? (2003), Peace for Realists (winner of the Ishibashi Tanzan award, 2005), International Politics (2007), Conditions of War (2013), A Destabilizing World (2020), and Predatory Imperialism (forthcoming). Professor Fujiwara is a commentator on international affairs and writes a monthly column for Asahi Shinbun. He is also a film buff, and serves as a film reviewer for the NHK.

Panel Presentation (2025) | Peace Education in Times of Conflict
Emiko Miyashita
Haiku International Association, Japan

Biography

Emiko Miyashita is a prominent and widely published haiku poet, as well as an award-winning translator who has given invited lectures and workshops around the world. She serves as a councillor for the Haiku International Association, as well as secretary of the Haiku Poets Association International Department in Tokyo. She is a dojin (leading member) of Ten’i (Providence) haiku group lead by Dr Akito Arima, and also a dojin of the Shin (Morning Sun), haiku group lead by Dr Akira Omine. From January 2008, until March 2010, she judged and wrote an English-language haiku column with Michael Dylan Welch every first Sunday in the Asahi weekly paper.

Haiku Workshop (2025) | What Is Haiku?

Previous Presentations

Haiku Workshop (2024) | What Is Haiku?
Rebecca Olive
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia

Biography

Dr Rebecca Olive is a Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Urban Research at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Australia. She leads the research theme of ‘Regenerative Environments and Climate Action’ at the Centre. Dr Olive also serves as the current President of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia (CSAA). With a background in feminist cultural studies of sport and leisure, her current work explores how recreational sports shape our relationships to ecologies. In this work, she focuses on swimming and surfing to understand human relationships to coasts and the ocean, and has a growing focus on urban swimming including at beaches and in rivers and pools. She has a co-edited book, Women in Action Sport Cultures, and recently co-edited special issues in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Journal of Sport History, and Health and Place. Aside from academic publications, Dr Olive is active in community and public engagement, including community presentations and contributions to national and international media. You can learn more about this work at her website https://movingoceans.com.

Keynote Presentation (2025) | Swimming Together: World-Making with Everyday Practices