Call for Proposals: “Articulating South Asian Futures: Projects, Practices, and Emplacement” Dissertation Workshop

October 3-5, 2026
Shanghai, PRC

Workshop Mentors: Sangeeta Banerji (NYU Shanghai) and Lisa Björkman (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology/University of Louisville)

With generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Association for Asian Studies is pleased to host a dissertation workshop for advanced doctoral candidates who have completed their research and are writing their dissertations. The workshop, sponsored by the AAS South Asia Council (SAC), will take place October 3-5, 2026 at NYU Shanghai, Shanghai, PRC. The workshop theme will be “Articulating South Asian Futures: Projects, Practices, and Emplacement.”

Across South Asia, feelings associated with anticipating or aspiring toward the future, or acting in preparation for its uncertainties, also carry profound social, material and political consequences. Hedging one’s bets in a world where long-standing ecological patterns, geopolitical institutions, and ethical norms are being reconfigured has become an everyday concern. In this context, our workshop theme is one of hope.

We invite proposals related to how people in Asia imagine (and have imagined) future possibilities and rendered those imaginings legible and actionable. Articulating the future means mobilizing values, intentions, knowledge and resources to plot a path through an impasse. People can “articulate” the future through projects, large and small: the organization of time, people, and expertise, and the commitment of resources and action toward goals that may never be realized. Or the future could be articulated through practices (including language-based practices) that make tangible something already in the air and that in-turn signal different possibilities and futures. And as a region shaped by ongoing movements of people, ideas, and things, articulating the future involves crafting new modes of emplacement (crafting relations to land or place and forging new ways of belonging). We invite proposals focusing on any time from the early modern period to the present, and from across the social sciences and the humanities. The AAS encourages doctoral candidates across disciplines to apply for the workshop. We extend a special invitation to those in the underrepresented disciplines in the AAS including performance studies, literary studies, and anthropology/history of migration, religion and media.

Convening our workshop in Shanghai places conversations about hope and futurity within a city that has long served as a laboratory for articulating uncertain futures—through colonial encounters, socialist planning, and market-driven transformations. For scholars of South Asia, Shanghai offers a comparative vantage point to examine how aspirations, anticipations, and projects of the future are rendered material and actionable under conditions of rapid change. Its position within contemporary Asian circuits of finance, infrastructure, and migration also foregrounds the transregional flows through which futures are imagined, negotiated, and contested. Thinking from Shanghai thus invites participants to situate South Asian futures within wider Asian processes of emplacement, belonging, and world-making, rather than as regionally bounded phenomena. From our vantage point in Shanghai, studying the forms, voices, and platforms through which Global South Asian futures are taking shape comes into sharp focus—immediate and palpable.

The workshop is limited to ten participants. Workshop participants will be required to read and provide feedback on their colleagues’ work. Mentors will lead discussions in seminar style, facilitating discussion on each participant’s pre-circulated materials During the two-and-a-half-day workshop, time will be set aside for informal meetings and conversations, group dinners and social gatherings, and opportunities to interact with the participants in the AAS East and Inner Asia Council (EIAC) dissertation workshop, which will be held simultaneously. To help ensure the best possible use of this valuable face-to-face time, the workshop will meet virtually one month prior to the in-person meeting, when each participant will introduce the circulated materials that will be discussed at the in-person meeting.

Participants may be based anywhere in the world but must be able to attend the workshop in Shanghai in person. NYU Shanghai will provide invitation letters for visa purposes, but participants are responsible for securing their own visas. Priority will be given to applications from participants based at institutions in Asia.

Students selected for the workshop will receive a grant to cover the costs of:

• • lowest economy-class airfare from their home location to Shanghai
  • AAS-in-Asia 2027 conference registration fee (location to be announced later)
  • lodging (shared room) during the workshop
  • meals during the workshop

All application materials must be submitted via the AAS application portal by May 30, 2026.

To apply, please submit the following (all materials should be submitted in English):

• • A letter of recommendation from your academic advisor. Letters of recommendation must be emailed directly by your advisor to grants@asianstudies.org no later than May 30, 2026. Please have your advisor include your full name in the subject line and “AAS2026 Global South Asia Dissertation Workshop”
  • A three-page proposal, outlining the themes and argument of your dissertation. Your proposal should address the following:
    1. How the project relates to this year’s workshop theme, Articulating the Future
    2. Research puzzles and problems that the thesis addresses
    3. Description of the body of literature relevant to the thesis
    4. Description of the research conducted and methods used
    5. Stakes of the study (and for whom)
    6. Outline of chapters (chapter title and 1-2 sentences about each)
    7. Language competencies
  • Dissertation abstract and one completed chapter
  • CV (3 pages maximum)

Questions? Please contact grants@asianstudies.org for assistance.