About the Asia Centre

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.

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.

Vision and Mission

Research

We conduct research in disciplinary areas such as theatre and performance, music, art, design, computing and education, as well sociology, politics, anthropology, media studies and management, as well as in interdisciplinary fields such as creative and cultural entrepreneurship, arts management, cultural policy, cultural tourism, heritage and curatorship, and consumer studies.

Our  have had considerable success in accessing external sources of research funding from public funding bodies such as the AHRC and British Council/DFID, as well as from private trusts (e.g. Ford Foundation) and private sector companies. Our research outputs are published in peer reviewed journals and books with high impact publishers, as well as in creative outputs such as plays, exhibitions and performances. We are actively engaged in co-authoring publications with  and are highly involved with joint bids for funding with Asian partners.

Consultancy and Networking

Our members are providing consultancies and advice for a wider variety of locally based and internationally based organizations. We are working with London boroughs and London-wide government, as well as with London based media, arts organisations, and private sector companies.

Many of our members are active as trustees for a variety of arts organisations (e.g. Pan Intercultural) as well as museums (Horniman Museum, Brighton Museum), and theatres (e.g. Saddler’s Wells). We have worked with international bodies such as the Asian Development Bank, UNESCO and UNWTO, and are continuing to expand our international portfolio.

We have extensive Asian networks and able to make important connections and to act as fixers for the media, government agencies, arts bodies and private sector companies, and our expertise on Asian etiquette and business negotiation is much sought after.

Teaching

Our members have extensive Asian teaching experience as full faculty members of Asian universities, as teachers of Asian students in Western universities, as providers of short courses in Asia and in providing help with curriculum development and validated programmes, such as the Lasalle-Goldsmiths partnership in Singapore.

Our teaching is highly informed by our Asian expertise and Asian references and cases studies are used on a wide variety of modules and courses across the college. We also have a very active network of Asian postgraduate students with a strong record of completion at the PhD level. Many of our members are also actively involved in supervising postgraduates based on Asian campuses, often acting as Visiting Professors.

We are also engaged in adapting and creating research methods appropriate for Asian contexts, as well as in engaging with research approaches developed in Asia.

Community Engagement

Members of the Asia Centre are actively involved in community engagement as can be seen through the Confucius Institute’s work with young people in engaging with Chinese culture in south London.  is Director of Goldsmith’s Asian Music Unit and in 2016 he and Jasmine Hornabrook worked on musical learning and performance among London’s Tamil diaspora with support from the AHRC.