Our aim is to foster high-quality research, innovative solutions and a new generation of scholars by developing transnational intellectual exchanges and networks, collaborative research projects, publications, and workshops, and other mentoring programs for research students and early career scholars.

Our approach draws on historical discourses on modernity, nationalism and postcoloniality that have framed Asia as a geographical region, historically, while challenging these definitions through explorations of decolonisation, globalisation and indigenisation. In doing so our scholarship acknowledges the socio-political basis of the built environment and its significance for critiques of modernisation, development, environmental agendas and capital.

                                                                                   Map of Asia 1607 (Image © Jodocus Hondius)

 

AIMS

 

The aim of this association is to generate a significant body of research on Asian Built Environments by drawing on the intellectual commitment of an increasing number of scholars from the second generation of critical historians of Asia. The work of these scholars is essential for shaping scholarship on and within Asia, as the region expands economically and establishes new research-oriented architectural programs.

  • Our aim is to encourage collaborative, interdisciplinary research of a high standard which will maintain the place and significance of Asia in architectural history programs outside Asia and the significance of architectural history in programs within Asia.
  • Our intention is to develop and mentor a new generation of scholars.
  • Our disciplinary foci include architecture and related fields such as urbanism, landscape design and construction, design studies, art history and allied sub-disciplines. We also draw on associated research in the humanities and social sciences that employ spatial methodologies.
  • We are committed to developing historiographical and methodological approaches that are innovative and exploratory, and through which we hope to advance the built environment disciplines.

 

Objectives

 

Within these stated objectives:

  • To encourage a more integrated knowledge of Asia through regional engagement for research and collaboration.
  • To promote the dissemination of research through publications, meetings and lectures and other means as maybe authorised through the membership.
  • To provide interdisciplinary and inter-geographical fora for the exchange of ideas, both related to and in addition to SAUH.
  • To explore historiographical and methodological innovations that will expand and give greater visibility to scholarship on Asia within existing curricula.

                                                                                           Indie 1689 (Image © Johannes van Keulen Paskaart van Oost)