[Originally posted September 2012. This is updated and re-posted.]
The University of Sydney will host the Twelfth International Conference on Thai Studies (ICTS12) in April next year. This is a reminder that proposals for panels are due by the end of this month. Full details of the conference, and the online forms for panel and paper proposals and for registration are available here.
Since 1981, ICTS has been held every three years at different universities in and outside Thailand. This will be the first ICTS to be held in a city outside Thailand that has a significant Thai population, and this will help define the over-arching theme of the conference. Thailand in the World also anticipates the ASEAN Community in 2015, recognizes the globalization of the Thai economy, and follows a longstanding interest of ICTS in the broader world of Tai cultures beyond Thailand’s borders. As previously, the conference will be also open to a wide range of themes in the field of Thai Studies.
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The Twelfth International Conference on Thai Studies will be held at the University of Sydney from 22-24 April 2014. The theme will be “Thailand in the World”, and it will only take a short walk from the conference venue to the restaurants of King Street to confirm the influence of Thailand in Australia’s largest city. Sydney University has a strong tradition in Thai studies (Bill Geddes, Doug Miles and Peter Hinton were all members of the Anthropology department where I studied as an undergraduate) and the conference organiser, Phil Hirsch, has taken a lead in raising the profile of Southeast Asian studies at the University. All in all, its a great location for a Thai studies conference.
The first call for papers is available here. And the conference website is here.
The name of the conference “Thailand in the World” made me think the organisers are out of touch.
Here in Thailand where it is rare to see a map on a school wall and any map beyond the Kingdom of Thailand is hard to find one thinks the title should be “Thailand out of this World”.
Well I suppose Thai auto workers are putting Australians out of a job and allowing the price of cars to plummet while food and lodgings become unaffordable and the country still exports rice which will be handy in the great famine of 2013. However I wonder when the government talks of the South East being the Detroit of Asia if either it or the workforce realise the irony of what they say consdering the ghost town Detroit has become?
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Who, or which organisations, are sponsoring or lending their name to this event? To labour the point made many times before on this forum, I am sceptical of any official involvement by Thai ‘authorities’, especially government or educational institutions that will automatically excoriate any discussion about lese majeste, the royal family or, indeed, any channel of discussion that negates the official fairy tale.
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That’s an interesting old map, Andrew. Could you tell us how old it is, and where it came from?
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Here: http://www.poricany.cz/cambodia/camb_soubory/Indo_china_1886_big.jpg
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Unless my eyesight is failing me – there’s no Laos on this map – only a united Siam.
And no Bangkok dominant – not easy to even see where Bangkok is !!
Is this map past – or futuristic ?
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Thanks for that beautiful big map from 1886.
The Burma Railway proposal here would have cost the Siamese a fortune, and the British not so much. The Japs had a better idea of where to put it.
I guess the boundaries of Siam represent the limit of the area which the Bangkok régime had managed to rob in sporadic raids.
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