News from NIAS

Nadine Plachta, PhD student, University of Bern.

Himalayan Borderland Communities: Identity, Belonging, and Place Among the Tsumpa

Nadine Plachta is a PhD student enrolled in the Global Studies Doctoral Program at the Graduate School of Humanities of the University of Bern in Switzerland. In her dissertation, she explores how the Tsumpa, a community of roughly 3000 in Nepal’s northern Gorkha District, strategically make us of identity and indigeneity for asserting group distinctiveness and recognition within the Nepalese state. The dissertation focuses on the lived experiences and historical narratives of members of the Tsum community that initially had formed in a state adverse place but have gradually been incorporated into the domains of Nepal through the nation-building processes of an expanding state power. By analyzing the interconnections of identity, belonging, and place from a bottom-up perspective, this dissertation delves into the practices in which the state is imposed, invoked, or ignored at its borderlands. It thus also reconsiders the notion of borderlands that are often thought of as provincial regions at the margins of states as centers on the periphery.

Loui Halse, Ma student, Lund University.

Racial stereotypes in Japan seen through popular cultural media.

I am a master student from the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University expected to finish my Masters thesis and graduate in June of 2018. My academic background consist of a bachelor degree from Copenhagen University where I studied one semester abroad at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, which is where I started taking an interest in contemporary East Asian societies. Since then I have lived briefly in Asia on two other occasions; first in Taipei, Taiwan doing an internship at the Danish Trade Office and later in Tokyo, Japan collecting data for my thesis with the help of Prof. Toru Shinoda at Waseda University. In my thesis, I am using media semiotics to analyze contemporary Japanese cinema with the intention of finding out what they can tell us about how Japanese people perceive foreigners of Western origins. My interest in this topic comes from my own experience in East Asia where I sometimes have felt that I received preferential treatment due to my Caucasian appearance and by using recent movies I will try to document if such a positive bias do exist.  

Soumi Banerjee from the Department of Global Studies, Lund University, is pursuing her final year of her Masters programme. She has previous experience of working as a Research assistant at the Department of Political science with the project on Crisis and Trauma: gender violence post-disaster in Pakistan, and currently she is working as a Teaching assistant in SASNET (South Asian Studies Network) in Lund University. She completed her bachelors with a major in Political science, from Presidency University, Kolkata, and in her bachelor’s project she did extensive study on the Indo-Pak Relations from a political discourse shaping identity relations. was For her master’s thesis, she is inspired by the Ontological security theory and will be exploring the origin of recent wave of Hindu nationalism in India through studying its post-colonial past in order to conceptualize the politics of hatred, emotions and memories of trauma as a device to reawaken race pride among the Hindus.

Netta Lagus, MA Student, East-Asian studies at Helsinki University.

I am a master student from Helsinki University, Finland, majoring in East-Asian Studies. I have a bachelor degree in Asian studies, have spent some time studying aboard (Japan) and done secondary studies in Cognitive Science and Strategy, which I studied in Finnish National Defence University. I am currently working on my thesis about North Korea's role in world politics, which is intertwined with the nuclear weapons issues these days. In my thesis, I try to find out how North Korea became such a country it is today, how other nations' pressure or aid have influenced its development, and what role nuclear weapons have played in this. 

From February 12-16, the Fudan-European Centre for China Studies along with NIAS – Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and Nansen Academy co-arranged the 2018 Understanding Asia course, which took place at Nansen Academy in Lillehammer, Norway.
Held annually since 2013, the course features five days of lectures and activities to provide participants with a deeper understanding of the cultural, political, and economic elements shaping today’s Asia.

Geir Helgesen gave a lecture entitled ‘Culture and politics, an introduction to (North) Korea’.  Here he mapped the landscapes of the political cultures of “the two Koreas” which, although often seen as in opposition, has deeply rooted similarities due to their common history. He also hosted a meeting at Nansen Academy under the title ‘North Korea – a threat to world peace or a convenient enemy? Uncomfortable questions and controversial answers’. The meeting was open for participation for all interested, and served as an introduction to the present-day conflict on the Korean peninsula. Geir Helgesen offered an analysis of the situation and suggested that consistent dialogue with North Korea is the most feasible option for a solution of the conflict.

Chunrong Liu gave two lectures, addressing China’s perspective on the tensions on the Korean Peninsula and Chinese politics in the “New Era”. On Korea nuclear affairs, he invited a deep thinking about the root cause and the discussion about “who has the key”.  He showed how China has been involved in the mediation process with the initiative of the Six Party Talk, and explained China’s priorities of peace, stability and dialogue, as well as the possibility to avoid a war in a “dark forest”.  In the second lecture, he analyzed China’s domestic politics – new dynamics associated with the 19^th CPC national congress.  He showed the continuities and “paradoxical developments” of Chinese politics, which features both power recentralization and the new political spaces that are necessary for the implementation of national policy schemes of poverty reduction and eco-civilization. 

Finally, professor dr. Song Xinning, Jean Monnet Chair ad personam and China director of BACES – Brussels Academy for China and European Studies gave a lecture on EU-China relations under the title ‘EU-China strategic partnership under the new leadership’.  He characterized EU and China as partners in terms of economy (trade and investment), global governance, development and culture, and argued that while both EU and China has benefitted from their mutual cooperation, deepening the relations between the two will prove beneficial for both parties. He also argued that the change in leadership in China has produced a “new thinking” of EU-China relations, which differs from past strategies in terms of its style, preference and policy. This thinking is guided by Xi Jinping’s “three two” understanding of the nature of EU-China relations: two forces for global peace, two markets for world economy, and two origins of world civilization.  

Following the conclusion of Understanding Asia, Geir Helgesen and Kasper Ørntoft Thor met with representatives from Nansen Academy, including rector Unn Irene Aasdalen, to discuss and plan for the 2018 NEWDAY summer school.

NEWDAY 2018 will take place 7-17 August of this year and will soon be open for applications from potential participants. It will feature lectures by prominent scholars, journalists and politicians for students to learn about and debate core issues of our time. For more information, visit www.newdaylillehammer.org

NEWDAY is arranged by NIAS, Fudan Centre and Nansen Academy with the support of Nordic Council of Ministers.