CEACS

The Centre for Contemporary East Asian Cultural Studies (CEACS) was founded in March 2012. In 2018, CEACS joined the University of Nottingham’s  Asia Research Institute and became one of the research centres that the institute hosts. CEACS contributes to the university’s overall strategy to expand and develop Asia-related research. CEACS members contribute to a number of the University’s Research Priority Areas including Languages, Texts and Society;  Creative and Digital; and  Rights and Justice.

CEACS understands ‘East Asia’ broadly, as a geographic region, a cultural imaginary and a critical method. East Asia includes national, subnational, regional, transnational and diasporic East Asian communities and cultures. CEACS recognises the transnational nature of East Asia and pays meticulous attention to inter-regional and intra-regional cultural flows.

CEACS embraces interdisciplinary research. It understands culture in the broadest possible sense. It recognises the intersection of culture with politics, economy, law, geography and society. It also acknowledges the political nature of culture and the cultural mediation of politics. In encouraging interdisciplinary research, CEACS aims to facilitate a decolonial and anti-hegemonic research culture based on conversation and collaboration.

Whilst CEACS embraces the contemporary critical turn within the humanities, it also seeks to engage critically with differing cultural perspectives associated with traditional and contemporary East Asian cultural thought and practice.

The Centre works closely with cultural institutions, creative industries and cultural practitioners to support the public dissemination of knowledge about East-Asian cultures within an international context. Through its work the Centre also Through its work, the Centre seeks to contribute to the activities of cultural institutions, practitioners and related communities of interest.

Drawing on established expertise at the University of Nottingham’s campuses in the UK, China and Malaysia, CEACS provides a unique focus for interdisciplinary research networking, international mobility, knowledge transfer and public impact involving scholars, research students and practitioners engaged in the study of East-Asian cultures both within East Asia and beyond.

Research expertiseMembers of CEACS have expertise in the following broad areas:

• media and visual culture in East Asia
• heritage and history in East Asia
• creative and cultural industries in East Asia
• gender, sexuality and identity in East Asia
• space, place and East Asian transnationalism

The centre welcomes offers of funding to support its activities from interested individuals and institutions.

• Lonán Ó Briain is currently working on RadioAsiaPacifika: Cultural Broadcasting in the Asia Pacific region, a project funded by AHRC.

• The Leverhulme Trust, ‘Playing Empire in the Nineteenth Century: Games, Spectacles and Colonial Subjects,’ Leverhulme Research Fellowship, 2018-19 (£50,598 awarded to Ting Chang).

• Xiaoling Zhang has succeeded in winning research grants from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Chiang-chin Guo Foundation, the British Council and the Chinese National Soft Science Fund.

• Thomas Barker was Visiting Research Fellow at the National ChengChi University (NCCU), Taiwan. 2 April – 30 June 2018.

• Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Council (BC) ‘Ethics of Makerspaces (Digital Fabrication Production Sites) in Shenzhen, China’, 2018 (project led by Daniel Mutibwa).
• Ningbo Science & Technology Bureau IAMET fund. ‘One Belt One Road cultural heritage’ project, 2017 (300,000 RMB) (project led by Andrew White). 
• European Research Council funded project “Cultures of Occupation in 20^th century Asia” on the influence of foreign occupation on cultural expression in East and Southeast Asia in the modern era (€2 million, Principal Investigator, Jeremy Taylor).
• British Academy International Partnership Project ‘Cultures of the Chinese Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1949-1963’ on late colonial responses to and debates about the circulation of Chinese language media in Malay(si)a and Singapore in the 1950s and early 1960s (£28,000, Principal Investigator, Jeremy Taylor)