About

The Harvard University Asia Center was founded in 1997 as a university-wide interfaculty initiative. From its inception, the Asia Center has been committed to facilitating the study of Asia at Harvard University by fostering research and bringing together faculty members, students, scholars, and other practitioners to explore the interconnected histories of the region and the significant issues facing Asia today. Given that many current research questions and challenges are not limited to a single country or region but transcend borders, the Asia Center prioritizes transnational research across Asia’s regions.

The Asia Center focuses its initiatives, events, and student and faculty grants on East, South, and Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on topics that cross national boundaries and academic disciplines. With its core lectures, seminar series, and conferences, the Center engages with topics critical to Asia and its global connections, bringing in notable academics, government officials, business leaders, and other specialists as featured speakers and panelists. The following three initiatives are crucial to achieving the Asia Center’s mission:

TRANSNATIONAL ASIA INITIATIVE 

The Transnational Asia Initiative advances scholarship that crosses national boundaries and disciplinary divisions to explore the connections across Asia’s diverse histories, cultures, and contemporary challenges, encouraging collaborative research that reflects the region’s complexity and ongoing transformations. The Initiative promotes scholarship that engages in the interconnectedness of East, South, and Southeast Asia. This is achieved through seminars, conferences, events, faculty research support, student support, the Affiliates Program, and the Graduate Student Associate Program.

SOUTHEAST ASIA INITIATIVE

The mission of the Southeast Asia Initiative is to support scholarship at all levels, foster collaboration with academics and practitioners both within and beyond Harvard and strengthen the University’s institutional capacity in the field of Southeast Asian studies. Its core pillars include language instruction, course development, student and faculty support, and public programming. Southeast Asia has been historically underrepresented at Harvard, and the Asia Center sees the strengthening of Southeast Asian studies as an integral part to the study of Asia.

PUBLICATIONS PROGRAMS

The Publications Program is one of the world’s most widely respected publishers of scholarly books in Asian studies with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. Since the 1950s, with the support of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard-Yenching Institute, Korea Institute, and Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, more than 650 monographs have been published in the Harvard East Asian Monograph Series, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, and Harvard Contemporary China Series. The Publications Program advances the Asia Center’s mission by contributing vital scholarship that enriches the field of Asian Studies and informs teaching and research about Asia at Harvard and beyond.