On 29 May 2025, Research Associate Lois Kamenitz and () presented an research presentation and encouraged an exchange of ideas on the findings of their impact evaluation study on tech-empowered healthy living for seniors with dementia. The Public Health Agency of Canada and The United Way of Greater Toronto (Allan Slaight Seniors Fund) funded the project, which YCAR supported. .

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The University of British Columbia鈥檚 , the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto, and the 91亚色 Centre for Asian Research hosted the 2025 Myanmar Emerging Scholars and Young Leaders Workshop from 14鈥�16 May 2025 at 91亚色鈥檚 Keele campus.  

The workshop brought together 32 emerging scholars and young leaders from Myanmar, of Myanmar origin, or those conducting research on Myanmar. It provided a unique platform to build networks, foster collaboration, and strengthen participants鈥� contributions to Myanmar鈥檚 democratic future. It is part of an ongoing series that has supported the professional development of Myanmar students at universities across Canada.

This year鈥檚 workshop also included an interactive session on civil-military relations led by NUS Professor Terence Lee (National University of Singapore), a training on post-disaster relief led by Ali Asgary at 91亚色鈥檚 Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation (ADERSIM) Lab, and a public event at the University of Toronto where participants presented policy briefs from the Futures of Myanmar project, a collaboration with the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada.

This event was made possible through the generous support of the International Development Research Centre鈥檚 (IDRC) Knowledge for Democracy Myanmar (K4DM) initiative.

N. Thein photograph

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聽In 2000, ABMP started with a group of officials from Beijing, China who wanted to learn about Canadian management practices. Over the years, the program expanded to include workshops, site visits, and joint projects with partners in China and Vietnam. When the demand for training of officials began to change, ABMP turned to the universities and trained their faculty, students, and administrators. On 91亚色鈥檚 campus, groups of 25 university presidents or educators from Chinese colleges could often be seen taking a break from their ABMP program to enjoy lunch at 91亚色 Lanes. ABMP has been affiliated with YCAR, and its predecessor, the Joint Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, since its inception.

鈥淲e have employed dozens of 91亚色 faculty, provided major research funding for faculty and graduate students working on Canada-China relations, and developed programs in Canada to support our Asian diaspora,鈥� said Frolic. 

With the recent downturn in Canada-China relations, ABMP has diversified by engaging with new partners, creating experiential learning opportunities for Asian-identifying students across Canada, collaborating with local not-for profit organizations to train Asian newcomers, and focusing on virtual programs instead of face-to-face training. Additionally, ABMP is developing initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region while expanding its work with Asian communities in Canada.

鈥淎BMP has helped 91亚色 to reach out to Asia,鈥� Frolic said. 鈥淲e have learned much from the interchange between trainees and their teachers, from our engagement with officials here and abroad, and through our cooperation with partner universities in Asia. What better way to establish long term links and an understanding of different cultures and values?  We are grateful for what we have been able to accomplish these past twenty-five years, and that it has been of value to those whom we have trained, and to 91亚色.鈥� As we look ahead, we remain committed to fostering connections, promoting understanding, and adapting to the ever-changing needs of our partners in Canada, Asia, and beyond. Here's to the next chapter of building bridges and creating impact.鈥�

As we look ahead, we remain committed to fostering connections, promoting understanding, and adapting to the ever-changing needs of our partners in Canada, Asia, and beyond. Here's to the next chapter of building bridges and creating impact, said Frolic.

Learn more about ABMP on its website.

The post ABMP Celebrates 25 Years in 2025 appeared first on 91亚色 Centre for Asian Research.

We look forward to receiving YCAR Associates鈥� applications for the following funding opportunities. The deadline for all opportunities is 01 May 2025.

• YCAR Publication Support Fund
• Workshop and Conference Fund
• Lecture Series Fund
• Research Collaboration Fellowship

More information about all of our opportunities can be found on our website.  Questions always welcome at ycar@yorku.ca.

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YCAR offers funding for its associate in support of their publication efforts and in this academic year, we are pleased to have supported four new publications by our Faculty Associates: Mona Oikawa (Equity Studies), Joan Judge (History), Muyang Li (Sociology) and Nalini Persram (Social Science).

Mona Oikawa (Equity Studies) is co-editor with Kirsten Emiko McAllister of , which the University of British Columbia Press will publish in April. 聽

After Redress is a collection of eight essays by scholars who work in the areas of Indigenous Studies and Asian Canadian Studies. The book examines how struggles for justice continue long after truth and reconciliation commissions conclude and state redress is supposedly made. It focuses on what can be learned from the aftermath of struggles for redress by Indigenous peoples and Japanese Canadians. Contributors to this trenchant volume analyze the complex, often paradoxical process of redress from the perspectives of the communities involved. In a context where mechanisms for reconciliation and redress have been defined by the settler state, this book reveals how Indigenous peoples and Japanese Canadians have responded to Western liberal notions of justice, whether by challenging or conforming to them, or by pursuing their own approaches. They discuss strategies used by Indigenous peoples and Japanese Canadians, adapted from their own epistemological or experiential roots and connections, and demonstrate that knowing our histories of struggle is essential for guiding our struggles today.

University of Chicago Press will publish Joan Judge鈥檚 The Politics of Common Reading: Vernacular Knowledge and Everyday Technics in China,1894鈥�1954 in Fall 2025.

The book posits that cheap how-to manuals helped to liberate common readers from political structures that increasingly sought to mold them, granting them the autonomy to manage the daily-life challenges that arose in this era of governmental instability, institutional failure, and technological change. The book first introduces the common readers, the rustic 鈥渁mong the people鈥� (minjian) publishers that created the common readers鈥� corpus, and the bookstalls and byways that constituted the national commoner book network. It then focuses on four specific challenges the daily-use manuals helped common readers confront: how to cure an opium addiction, how to avoid an electric shock, how to prevent a cholera infection, and how to graft a plant. Throughout, the narrative juxtaposes the politics of accommodation which governed the vernacular, minjian realm with the politics of tutelage dictated by 鈥淓nlightening鈥� cultural and official authorities. While the politics of tutelage sought to eradicate temporal gaps between China and the world, national elites and local villagers, the politics of accommodation sought to reconcile global and domestic non-synchronicities. Whereas 鈥淓nlighteners鈥� were determined to mold 鈥渢he people鈥� into model readers and compliant citizens, the minjian materials met commoners where they were and engaged them as knowers. The book introduces composites of such knowers: details of the problems they encountered, the solutions they attempted, and the texts they consulted to find their way. It argues that the acts of conciliation these readers engaged in shaped the broad epistemic terrain from which historical change was actualized in China鈥檚 century of revolution.

Muyang Li received support for The Return of Yellow Peril: Anti-Asian Racism during the COVID-19 Pandemic, co-edited with Guida C. Man (Faculty Associate, Sociology), X. Alvin Yang (former Visiting Graduate Associate) along with Chandrima Chakraborty and Sibo Chen. The University of British Columbia will publish the collection in November. The book presents a collection of selected papers presented at YCAR workshop 鈥淎nti-Asian racism during COVID-19: An interdisciplinary approach,鈥� held in June 2021.

Since the global outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, there has been a noticeable increase in assaults on individuals of Asian (especially Chinese) descent in Canada and other western countries. Anti-Asian racism, as a "shadow pandemic," has worsened the impact of COVID-19 on Asians in a multitude of ways. The impact of the present wave of anti-Asian racism is especially widespread and severe. It has led to the alarming resurgence of toxic, racialized 鈥淵ellow Peril鈥� tropes in public discourse. Originating from the fear of non-white Other, the term 鈥淵ellow Peril鈥� became prominent in the late 1800s as a pejorative metaphor attacking Chinese and other Asians. The term鈥檚 current resurgence builds on intensifying political polarization and right-wing populism across the Western world by further defaming Asians as 鈥渁n existential threat to the West, to liberal human rights, to the market economy, to the 鈥榬ules-based鈥� order, to American primacy鈥�.

As Asian Canadians continue to face pandemic-related socio-economic consequences and racial discrimination, there is an urgent need for scholarly interventions that examines the resurgence of 鈥淵ellow Peril鈥� from historical, geopolitical, and local perspectives. Contributions to the volume are guided by the following questions: What accounts for the increase in anti-Asian racism that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic? How does anti-Asian racism affect Asian communities and intercultural relationships? How can we mitigate the rise of anti-Asian racism?

By presenting critical perspectives on these pressing questions from scholars with diversified backgrounds, the volume aims to (1) provide a comprehensive diagnosis of the structural factors that contributed to the alarming return of 鈥淵ellow Peril鈥� tropes in Canadian public discourse, (2) document how Asian communities in Canada responded to pandemic-related racial injustice, and (3) discuss potential policy and grassroots solutions to anti-Asian racism and other forms of racial injustice. The collection will call attention to the less visible societal implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby making significant contributions to ongoing public discussions about socioeconomic and racial equality.

Nalini Persram is author of Postrevolutionary Reckoning in Yemen Under Saudi-American Bombs, which is set to be published by Palgrave Macmillan later this year.

This project engages in a critical inquiry into the military intervention in Yemen that began in 2015, and the current politics that surround the Red Sea crisis that developed in October 2023. Who are Ansar Allah, why were they the target of an illegal bombing campaign and how do both matters relate to the crisis in the Red Sea and the situation in Gaza? The endeavour is to foster research interest in the topic among undergraduates, graduates, post-doctoral researchers and visiting scholars, to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the themes and problematics identified, and to expand and refine them. It aspires to contribute to the network of national and international researchers, and particularly to engage those who are Yemeni or who live in Yemen, who are working on the complexities of the situation in Yemen and the region by bringing to bear on the existing literature different perspectives on a situation that requires urgent analytical, political and humanitarian attention.

The YCAR Publication Support Fund is intended to assist in covering expenses that will enable or enhance the publication of research on Asia or Asian diasporas by YCAR Faculty Associates or Graduate Associates, usually in the form of a book but YCAR has also funded expenses related to journal special issues, video/film projects and exhibitions. Learn more at this link.

The next deadline for applications is 01 May 2025.  

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This exhibition is a key output of the Slow Violence and Water (in)justice: Feminist Political Ecologies of Intergenerational Struggles in the Mekong Region project, led at 91亚色 by Nga Dao and Vanessa Lamb and including team members in Canada, Vietnam and Thailand. The project looks at slow violence and water justice in Southeast Asia鈥檚 Mekong Region.

The photographs were exhibited to coincide with the festival L峄� Xu峄憂g 膽峄搉g (L脭 h茅i Ro贸ng Po峄峜 in Hmong language) (starting new crop ceremony) after the Lunar New Year in Lao Cai province. Policymakers were invited to attend and dialogue with participants on potential solutions for alternative livelihoods and environmental protection in the project villages. . There were about more than 2,000 people attending in the festival. The photographs were exhibited across the communes in February and April in various events.

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Global Hong Kong Essay and Creative Project Award

More information at this link

Undergraduate Asia and Asian Diaspora Essay Awards

More information at this link

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For those who want to contribute to relief efforts after March 2025 earthquake, below are two organizations that faculty and graduate students at 91亚色 know personally and will ensure that the funds go directly to those who need it most.

Community Partners International (CPI)

CPI is a long-trusted organization with teams and partners on the ground in #Myanmar who are working around the clock to help earthquake survivors. They're prioritizing:

• Support to local rescue teams
• First aid and medical referrals
• Emergency shelter, food, safe water, and hygiene supplies

More information at:

Saving Lives in Myanmar: Urgent Earthquake Relief

This is a GoFundMe campaign run by Vanessa Lamb鈥檚 (Social Science) colleague Sophia Htwe (who is from Mandalay, Myanmar and a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, Austraila)

More information at:

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Ghazala Shahabuddin (Environmental Studies, Ashoka University, India) and Shubhra Gururani (Anthropology) received a fellowship for their project, 鈥楻e-wilding鈥� the Urban Periphery: An interdisciplinary study of the changing politics of nature in India鈥檃 National Capital Region (NCR).

Recognizing the urgency to respond to the deleterious impact of urbanization of regional ecologies on the neighbouring cities of Gurgaon and Faridabad located in the southern edge of New Delhi, Gururani and Shahabuddin bring their long-term research experience in the area to evaluate the political ecology of rewilding projects in Delhi NCR.

鈥淭hrough this collaboration, we aim to launch an interdisciplinary conversation that brings together an ecologist and an anthropologist to evaluate the limits and possibilities of rewilding initiatives in India鈥檚 urbanizing peripheries,鈥� said Gururani.

Professor Shahabuddin will visit Toronto in Spring 2025 for two months.

Gururani has been conducting ethnographic research on urbanization in the city of Gurgaon since 2008. She has published widely on the subject and also conducted preliminary research on the Aravalli Biodiversity Park, which began as a restoration of mining quarries in Gurugram. She holds a SSHRC Insight Grant (2022鈥�26), Life and Death of Urban Nature in India, which focuses on the changing political ecologies of Gurgaon.

Shahabuddin is a well-known conservation biologist who has been tracking the loss of biodiversity in mountain ecologies of the Himalayas and the Aravallis in the peripheries of New Delhi over the past two decades. She has recently studied a rewilding project based on cheetah reintroduction. Gururani and Shahabuddin, coming from their disciplinary vantage points of conservation biology and social anthropology, will collaborate during the period of the research fellowship and initiate a much-needed dialogue to develop a multipronged response to the ecological crisis facing urban area in the global South.

Thomas Klassen (School of Public Policy and Administration) and collaborator Sophia Seung-Yoon Lee (Department of Social Welfare, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea) are working on a project on Platform Workers' Working Conditions and Social Protection. Dr Lee plans to spend two months in Toronto in Summer 2025.

The objective of their research is to conduct a comparative study on the working conditions and social protection regulations for platform workers in South Korea and Canada. The focus in Canada is the Greater Toronto region. In the context of rapid technological advancements, capitalism has transitioned into what is known as digital capitalism, significantly altering traditional labour markets. The proliferation of platform economies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to the dismantling of traditional employment relationships, making way for various forms of precarious work.

鈥淧revious studies on precarious work have predominantly analyzed the uncertainty and instability associated with the dissolution of traditional employment contracts, concentrating on the groups most affected by these changes. However, these studies have often fallen short of capturing the dynamic and non-standard nature of work observed in the new economy, including changes in work environments,鈥� said Klassen. 鈥淚f legislative reforms reflecting these changes are delayed, we risk facing a future where instability becomes the norm. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze and address the relationship between changing work forms, work environments, and instability. This research aims to provide concrete and practical legislative directions for restructuring social protection systems to match the new labor market realities.鈥�

Lee is an expert in labour market sociology, social policy, and comparative welfare state studies. She has extensive experience in researching precarious work and social protection, with several published works in high-impact journals. In the past she has collaborated with researchers in several nations. The duo have collaborated on an edited book on labour policy in Asia), Lee has visited 91亚色 in the past, and Klassen annually brings his 91亚色 summer study abroad students to Lee鈥檚 Korean social welfare policy. Their ongoing relationship helps ensure the success of the research project.

The YCAR Research Collaboration Fellowship (RCF) is aimed to promote intensive collaboration between a Faculty Associate of the Centre and a research collaborator at another research institution or organization. The fellowship provides support for a collaborator, usually from Asia, to visit Toronto for the specific purpose of jointly working on a research proposal, project or publication. Preference may be given to applicants with existing collaborations at the time of application. This opportunity is adjudicated by YCAR鈥檚 Awards Committee. The next deadline for applications for the 2025鈥�26 academic year is Friday, 16 May 2025.

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The CF is generously supported by the Asian Business and Management Program (ABMP).

In spring 2024, the CIF was relaunched with updated eligibility criteria and expanded opportunities, resulting in a fourfold increase in applications, according to Elena Caprioni, CIF Committee Chair and ABMP鈥檚 Program Director. Earlier this year, the committee awarded over $20,000 to two outstanding projects that embody CIF鈥檚 mission to reimagine China studies and strengthen global academic connections.

One of these projects, Vernacular Healing and World-Making in China, 19th to 21st Centuries, is led by Joan Judge, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 Department of History. This groundbreaking initiative investigates an often-overlooked realm of Chinese medicine: vernacular medicine. Through an innovative approach blending historical research and digital humanities, the project uncovers untapped knowledge essential to understanding Chinese history. Supported by CIF, Judge has been able to travel to critical archival sites in mainland China, Taiwan and Germany鈥攈ome to the Berlin State Library鈥檚 extensive holdings. Collaborating with leading scholars from institutions like the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Academia Sinica and Hunan University, this project is reshaping conversations in Chinese medicine studies by developing databases that illuminate the links between vernacular, elite and folk medical practices. YAR Graduate Associate Yunshi Liang (History) is the project鈥檚 Research Assistant.

The second project, led by YCAR Research Associate Julia G. Bentley, is titled Engaging Young Canada in the Sinosphere. This initiative focuses on reimagining China studies by training future scholars and fostering knowledge-sharing and collaboration among Canadian academics in the field. It aims to establish a framework for academic exchanges and partnerships between institutions in Canada and Taiwan, while also compiling an inventory of resources to support the next generation of Canadians interested in the Sinosphere. CIF funding complements the support provided by the Taiwan Fellowship, enabling three months of fieldwork at National Taiwan University. YCAR Graduate Associate Su Huai (Science and Technology Studies ) is a project Research Assistant.

鈥淭hese projects are not just advancing China studies but are also building global academic partnerships,鈥� said Caprioni. 鈥淭hey exemplify CIF鈥檚 commitment to fostering meaningful research projects on reimagining China studies.鈥�

The outcomes of these initiatives will be presented in Fall 2025.

The next round of applications opens on 24 February 2025, with proposals due by 12 May 2025. YCAR invites 91亚色 members to take advantage of the opportunities offered by CIF. For more details, visit the CIF website or contact ycar@yorku.ca.

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