Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society

06/04/2026

We are thrilled to welcome Denise Tse-Shang Tang as our closing keynote and celebrate the conversations this Summer School will open!

From Lingnan University, Denise’s research explores the everyday lives of older Chinese women with same-sex desires and transgender men in the workplace, centering rights, respect, and dignity as core tenets of livability. Their work highlights how uncertainty has always been part of daily life, and how resilience and strength emerge from navigating these conditions.

✨ Stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!

Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

genderstudies transstudies culturalstudies interasia dns2026

05/04/2026

Let’s meet June Hee Kwon, from California State University, Sacramento!

June Hee explores how human and nonhuman mobilities shape borderlands and landscapes across Cold War and postcolonial contexts. Her current research traces the social lives of citrus trees in Jeju, Korea, showing how trees, farmers, scientific knowledge, and state infrastructures together co-produce livable worlds.

At the IACS Summer School 2026, she will guide participants to explore how interspecies care, labor, and adaptation create resilient narratives of livability amid ecological, economic, and political uncertainty.

✨ Stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!

Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

22/03/2026

From The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Vennes Cheng explores archives as dynamic knowledge systems that can interrupt linear histories and inherited structures of memory. Drawing on art history and media archaeology, her work reimagines archives as experimental spaces for producing alternative forms of knowledge.

At the IACS Summer School 2026, Vennes will invite participants to rethink archival narration as a way to reimagine technologies and histories, and to open up more equitable and livable futures.

Stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!

Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

19/03/2026

✨ Let’s meet Cindy Anh Nguyen from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Drawing on feminist thought, sociotechnical histories, and critical disability studies, Cindy Anh Nguyen asks: how do we live, research, and learn ethically in a time of overlapping crises — from AI acceleration to climate change and global inequalities? Her work rethinks care not as a soft solution or added burden, but as a critical framework that recenters how and why we engage in scholarly and everyday practices.

At the IACS Summer School 2026, she will invite participants to explore how care can reshape research, pedagogy, and collective life in more intentional and livable ways.

Stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!

Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

17/03/2026

We are very excited to announce that the IACS 2026 cohort is now full. We are inspired by the 50 participants who will join us in Hong Kong and thank everybody who sent in their interest and applications to join us.

Please note that if you have not been invited to complete admission procedures by now, it means that we were unfortunately not able to include you in this year’s cohort. With more than 275 applications, we had to make some difficult calls that centered on who we thought we would be able to serve best with the resources and the faculty that we have.

We again extend our heartfelt thanks to all who applied. We hope you continue to engage with the IACS community in other ways in the future.

🔗 Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

11/03/2026

✨ Let’s meet Lisa Yuk-ming Leung from Lingnan University, Hong Kong

At the IACS Summer School 2026, Lisa will bring over a decade of research on the struggles and agencies of South Asian minority youth in Hong Kong. Focusing on the livability and narrativity of racial minorities, Lisa’s work examines the tactics and storytelling practices through which minority communities articulate forms of racial and labour subjectivity within Hong Kong’s social fabric.

We look forward to the conversations her session will open this summer! Please stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!

Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

10/03/2026

From The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Jia Tan explores the intersections of feminism and environmentalism in Asia. While both fields have received significant attention, her work asks why eco activism in the region is so rarely examined through a feminist lens.

By developing the idea of diverse activism, Jia Tan proposes a feminist approach to social movements—one that is deeply connected to everyday politics and that questions both conventional definitions of activism and the conditions under which activism is suppressed.

At the IACS Summer School 2026, Jia Tan will invite participants to rethink activism through the lens of care, environment, and everyday life.

✨ Please stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!

Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

07/03/2026

We can’t wait for Sonia Wong and creative approaches to inspire participants this summer!

Sonia Wong believes social change isn’t found in revolution, but in relationships of care. Her work explores how even the most mundane encounters can be sites of tenderness and mutual care. Through her performance and installation work, writer-artist-activist Sonia Wong reveals the hidden layers of overlooked exchanges in urban life, showing how we can intervene and create spaces for moments of connection and care.

At the IACS Summer School 2026, Sonia will guide participants in exploring how art, activism, and everyday practices can nurture livable worlds through care.

✨Please stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!

�Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

06/03/2026

✨ Let’s meet our faculty Nishant Shah, Director of Digital Narratives Studio, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Through the lens of livability, Nishant encourages us to rethink digital spaces and technologies as sites where care comes first, enabling conditions to live thrive and flourish. At the IACS Summer School 2026, Nishant will guide participants in reimagining how digital practices can support more caring, livable, and aspirational futures.

We can’t wait for his insights to spark rich conversations this summer. Please stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!
�Learn more: https://digitalnarratives.com.cuhk.edu.hk/articles/2026-iacs-summer-school

28/02/2026

Let’s meet our summer school faculty Jian Lian from the Chinese University of Hong Kong!

Jian’s work explores how digital platforms and algorithmic infrastructures are reshaping culture, labor, and everyday life, within and beyond China’s cultural economies. Through research on platforms and creator culture, he traces how technologies redistribute opportunity and risk across online and offline communities.

At the IACS Summer School 2026, Jian will invite participants to critically examine what kinds of social relations, cultural commons, and working conditions do platform technologies make possible? And how might we imagine more inclusive, sustainable, and accountable technological futures?

✨ Please stay tuned for more updates from IACS Summer School 2026!

Learn more: digitalnarratives.studio > spotlight

26/02/2026

We are thinking back to the 2025 edition of the IACS conference. The organisers have recently published their reflections in the IACS journal. Read our announcement here.

Center of Geosocial and Cultural Research for Sustainable Development

It has been a little over six months since we said our goodbyes to new and old friends after the 2025 IACS conference held over the course of three days in Nakhon Si Thammarat in southern Thailand. Every edition of our biennial conference is both familiar and unique: familiar because of the friends....