Asia Centre

The Goldsmiths Asia Centre is an exciting, innovative space where theory, practice and an interest in Asia come together.

We're forging a cutting-edge research platform that helps scholars and artists move across disciplinary, as well as geographic, boundaries.

Launched in 2015, the Centre promotes collaborative research, community development, capacity enhancement, knowledge transfer partnerships and exchanges in pedagogy with Asian partners. Collaborators from within the College come from both practice-based as well as academic departments. These currently include contributions from Goldsmiths Confucius Institute, Theatre and Performance, Music, Fine Arts, Design, Media Studies, Sociology, Politics, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Politics, Computing, Education and Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship.

The Goldsmiths Asia Centre promotes the co-authoring of works and joint funding bids by Goldsmiths and Asian scholars, and works to establish formal relationships with Asian universities, colleges and government, as well as collaborations with NGOs, the Media and strategic business partners.

The Centre builds on existing strengths in relation to China, but its remit extends beyond China into collaborative arrangements, such as the Goldsmiths-Singapore Lassalle partnership, as well as extensive individual scholarly partnerships that cover the whole of East, South and South-East Asia. In general, the Goldsmiths Asia Centre aims to create more international collaborations.

Moreover, given our London location, the centre also has a keen interest in engaging with London’s Asian diaspora and building on these links to develop stronger trilateral bonds between partners in Asia, Asian communities in London and Goldsmiths. This engagement with Asia extending beyond the region also takes place in other ways. 

With interdisciplinary strengths in contemporary theory and critical practice, and allied with the Centre for Postcolonial Studies, the centre also makes a contribution to the wider field of Asian area studies. While contemporary Asian area studies has always been inter-disciplinary, what sets Goldsmiths apart is its approach to theory and its extended notion of critical practice-based work. With this strong focus on theoretically driven scholarship and a unique take on critical practice, Goldsmiths Asia Centre offers a unique opportunity to undertake the study of Asia differently.

Researchers

Michael Dutton

Dr Francisco Carballo