“The Asian Melting Pot: Asian History through the Multicultural Perspective” is an academic conference co-organized by Chulalongkorn University and the Asian Universities Alliance (AUA). The co-hosts at Chulalongkorn University are the Faculty of Arts and the Office of International Affairs and Global Network. The conference is designed to encourage scholars from AUA member institutions and others from wider international networks to bring forth the rich history of multicultural exchanges across the Asian continent from the early modern period to the present day.
Asia has great diversity in terms of ethnicities, languages, religions, and cultural practices. Throughout the modern period and up to the present day, we have seen much more cooperation, collaboration, exchange, and learning among different Asian cultures, than violent conflicts. Much can be learned from history in these aspects of multicultural Asia. How did so much knowledge, faith, art, and the habits of everyday life travel from Japan to Anatolia and from Persia to Southeast Asia in eras long before the internet? How did so many different languages and religions coexist within the Subcontinent for thousands of years and how did so many tribes and ethnic groups travel through the Silk Road in relative calm and bring about such amazing prosperity in a time long before the invention of modern technologies of communication and transportation? These are some of the questions that the conference aims to investigate, opening a common line of academic inquiry to bring scholars together and encourage future collaborations.
