IAFOR > The Asian Conference on Cultural Studies (ACCS) > ACCS2025 > Programme

Programme

This page provides details of featured presentations, the conference schedule and other programming. For more information about presenters, please visit the Speakers page.

Conference Outline

Sunday, May 11, 2025Monday, May 12, 2025Tuesday, May 13, 2025Wednesday, May 14, 2025Thursday, May 15, 2025Friday, May 16, 2025

Location: The Public Red Akasaka, Tokyo

17:30-19:30: Welcome Reception | The Public Red Akasaka
This is a free event open to all registered delegates

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

11:30-12:30: Conference Check-in | Main Room (4F)

12:30-12:35: Announcements | Main Room (4F) & Online

12:35-13:00: Welcome Addresses & Recognition of IAFOR Scholarship Winners | Main Room (4F) & Online
Joseph Haldane, IAFOR, Japan

13:00-14:30: Panel Presentation | Main Room (4F) & Online

14:30-14:50: Coffee Break

14:50-15:15: Keynote Presentation | Orion Hall (5F)
15:15-15:40: Q & A Session | Orion Hall (5F)

15:45-16:10: Keynote Presentation | Orion Hall (5F)
16:10-16:25: Q & A Session | Orion Hall (5F)

16:25-16:40: Conference Photograph

16:40-17:00: Extended Coffee Break | Subaru (5F)

17:00-18:00: Conference Poster Session 1 | Orion Hall (5F)

19:00-21:00: Conference Dinner | Shunju Tameikesanno
This is a ticketed event

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

09:15-09:45: Conference Check-in | Subaru Room (5F)

09:45-10:45: Panel Presentation | Orion Hall (5F) & Online

10:45-11:00: Coffee Break

11:00-12:30: The Forum | Orion Hall (5F)

12:30-14:00: Lunch Break

14:00-15:00: Haiku Workshop | Orion Hall (5F)
Hana Fujimoto, Haiku International Association, Japan
Emiko Miyashita, Haiku International Association, Japan

15:00-15:30: Extended Coffee Break | Subaru (5F)

15:30-16:30: Conference Poster Session 2 | Orion Hall (5F)

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

08:30-09:30: Conference Check-in (7F)

09:30-11:10: Onsite Parallel Session 1

11:10-11:25: Coffee Break

11:25-12:40: Onsite Parallel Session 2

12:40-12:55: Coffee Break

12:55-14:35: Onsite Parallel Session 3

14:35-14:50: Coffee Break

14:50-16:30: Onsite Parallel Session 4

16:30-16:45: Coffee Break

16:45-18:25: Onsite Parallel Session 5

Location: Toshi Center Hotel, Tokyo

08:30-09:30: Conference Check-in (7F)

09:30-11:10: Onsite Parallel Session 1

11:10-11:25: Coffee Break

11:25-12:40: Onsite Parallel Session 2

12:40-12:55: Coffee Break

12:55-14:35: Onsite Parallel Session 3

14:35-14:50: Coffee Break

14:50-16:30: Onsite Parallel Session 4

16:35-16:50: Onsite Closing Session | Room 701 (7F)

Location: Online via Zoom

08:55-09:00: Message from IAFOR

09:00-09:40: Keynote Presentation | Online

09:40-11:20: Online Parallel Session 1

11:20-11:30: Break

11:30-13:10: Online Parallel Session 2

13:10-13:20: Break

13:20-15:00: Online Parallel Session 3

15:00-15:10: Break

15:10-16:50: Online Parallel Session 4

16:50-17:00: Closing Message from IAFOR

The above schedule may be subject to change.

Accepted Presentations

One of the greatest strengths of IAFOR’s international conferences is their international and intercultural diversity.
As of February 5, 2025, ACCS2025 has received over 410 submissions from over 53 countries and territories - including: Philippines, United States, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, and Singapore.

View Accepted Presentations

Featured Presentations

To be announced

  • Swimming Together: World-Making with Everyday Practices
    Swimming Together: World-Making with Everyday Practices
    Keynote Presentation: Rebecca Olive
  • Turning the Faucet to Full: Expanding the Use of Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) in Asian Humanities, Social Science, and Cultural Studies Research
    Turning the Faucet to Full: Expanding the Use of Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) in Asian Humanities, Social Science, and Cultural Studies Research
    Keynote Presentation: Thomas G. Endres

Featured Speakers

To be announced

Conference Programme

The draft version of the Conference Programme will be available online on April 07, 2025. All registered delegates will be notified of this publication by email.

*Please be aware that the above schedule may be subject to change.

Important Information Emails

All registered attendees will receive an Important Information email and updates in the run-up to the conference. Please check your email inbox for something from "iafor.org". If you can not find these emails in your normal inbox, it is worth checking in your spam or junk mail folders as many programs filter out emails this way. If these did end up in one of these folders, please add the address to your acceptable senders' folder by whatever method your email program can do this.

Previous Programming

View details of programming for past ACCS conferences via the links below.

ACCS2024 ACCS2023
ACCS2022 ACCS2021 ACCS2020
ACCS2019 ACCS2018 ACCS2017
ACCS2016 ACCS2015 ACCS2014
ACCS2013 ACCS2012 ACCS2011
Swimming Together: World-Making with Everyday Practices
Keynote Presentation: Rebecca Olive

As temperatures rise, biodiversity decreases, and conflicts escalate, the pressing need for us to find new ways to live with the world is well established. However, the challenge of the enduring ideology of human exceptionalism over nature continues to dominate so much of the thinking that guides policies, governance, and decision making at individual, local, national, and international levels. Challenging ideologies is easy when it is in theory, but changing them is more difficult in practice. Colonial and capitalist sorceries (Pignarre and Stengers, 2011) have established deep infrastructures of the heart (Slater, In Press), that alienate us from each other, making the mobilisation necessary for change a difficult task to achieve.

Drawing on ecofeminist, posthuman, and First Nations theories and scholarship, this presentation explores how everyday practices can be powerful in helping us feel human-ecological relationships in meaningful, consequential ways. With a focus on swimming, it explores how sports and physical activities offer an unexpected way to activate more ecological ethics of planetary care. Through swimming, we become one with the water and feel our interconnected vulnerability – we are part of the food chain, we absorb the pollution, we swim with multiple ancestors, we share the stories of what we see and feel. In this way, swimming, and other sports, can act as a form of reorientation to the possibilities of our shared world.

Read presenter's biography
Turning the Faucet to Full: Expanding the Use of Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) in Asian Humanities, Social Science, and Cultural Studies Research
Keynote Presentation: Thomas G. Endres

Humans are storytellers. Therefore, scholars – whether they be from the arts and humanities, the social sciences, or cultural studies – need the means to assess and interpret the symbolic narratives found within communities. Over the past two decades, a faucet has been turned on low, and a small stream of Asian scholars have started to use Ernest Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) as their theory and method of choice. The flow of research – examining heroes, villains, settings, and plotlines – has been slow but steady; now, in this address, SCT expert Thomas G. Endres plans to turn the faucet to full. In sharing both the body of work done throughout Asia and his own studies, which range from rhetorical analysis to quantitative research, both emerging and established scholars can assess SCT’s utility as an insightful tool. Hopefully the steady stream of this theoretical framework will expand, as SCT is further applied across a variety of Asian Pacific publications and presentations.

Read presenter's biography