CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

RELIGION AND SOCIETY IN ASIA: INDIA/CHINA/INDONESIA

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIPS

Funded by the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (University of Hong Kong) and co-sponsored by Dali University (Yunnan, China), the Asian Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies (Chennai, India) and the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (Yogyakarta, Indonesia).

Junior scholars based in universities in India, China and Indonesia are invited to apply for Faculty Development Fellowships on Religion and Society in Asia. The Fellowships are for a duration of three years, from 2017 to 2020, and will include participation in three annual summer schools to take place in China, India and Indonesia. The fellowships are open to scholars from all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, who work on contemporary issues and engage in empirical research. The first summer school will take place at Dali University, Yunnan, China from May 13-20, 2017.

The Faculty Development Fellowships aim to build research, teaching and collaborative capacity among a core network of junior and senior scholars in India, China and Indonesia through a series of three annual summer schools to be held consecutively in each of the three countries. The objective of the summer schools will be to (1) provide methodological, theoretical and empirical consultation and exchange on religion and society in Asia; (2) generate a trans-Asian comparative conversation leading to a collaborative publication. The consultation and exchange will lead to networking and collaboration for further study and research on religion and society in Asia.

Each yearly summer school will include a combination of workshops on theory, method and teaching; presentations and discussions on individual research projects; roundtable discussions on critical themes; and consultations on the collaborative publication. The three summer schools will each build on each other in thematic progression, aiming for a gradual development of capacity.

A total of 12 junior fellows will be selected for the programme, with 4 from each of the three participating countries. The organisers will aim for a balanced and diverse mix of participants in terms of gender and religious background or specialization. The summer schools will be held in English and the fellows are expected to be able to participate in academic reading, writing and discussion in English.

The fellowships will cover all transportation, accommodation and related expenses for each of the three summer schools. For fellows who are able to cover these expenses through their own institutions, a research stipend may be provided instead. A certificate of completion, issued by the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong, will be issued to the participants at the successful completion of the fellowship.

Applicants should be faculty members of a university in one of the participating countries, holding a PhD and aged 46 or under as of 1 Jan. 2017.

Applicants should send the attached form, scanned passport or ID card, CV, writing sample in English, a statement on your current and planned research over the next three years, and a cover letter explaining why you want to join this programme and why it is important in your country to strengthen the academic study of religion. Applicants should sign a statement committing themselves to attending the Summer conferences for three years.

The deadline for applications is October 31, 2016. Applicants will be notified of the results around one month later.

Please send applications to the project convenor for your country:

Applicants from China: Dr. Liang Yongjia, National University of Singapore/China Agricultural University: email: dean_liang@yahoo.com

Applicants from India: Prof. Felix Wilfred, Founder-Director, Asian Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies, Chennai: email: felixwilfred@gmail.com

Applicants from Indonesia: Prof. Dr. Bernard Adeney-Risakotta, Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies, Yogyakarta. Email: baryogya@gmail.com

For general information on the programme, please contact Dr. David A. Palmer, Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Hong Kong: palmer19@hku.hk

Background and rationale for the fellowships:

Over the past few decades, religion has played an increasingly vocal and visible role in Asian societies, identities and politics. In China, all forms of religion, whether indigenous or imported, are growing rapidly and increasingly challenging the secular consensus that has dominated intellectual, cultural and political life for over a century of modernizing reforms and revolutions. In India, religious traditions and identities are becoming more assertive in the public sphere, challenging a precarious inter-communal balance. In Indonesia, intensifying internal religious debates and conflicts are complicating the longstanding tension between Islamic and pluralist ideals. Throughout the region, conflations of religious and communal identity are either reinforced or challenged by the growth of Christianity and Islam. At the same time, modern spiritual movements and religious innovations are articulating new expressions of universal values and cosmopolitanism, blurring the boundaries between different traditions and between the religious and the secular.

Almost 60% of the world’s population lives in Asia, over three times more than any other continent. While the Middle East, Europe and the Americas are each dominated by one, highly institutionalized religious tradition, be it Islam or Christianity, we find a far greater diversity, not only between but also within most Asian societies, with a lively substratum of local, “animistic” or “folk” religion everywhere; Axial traditions originating in India and China; a strong presence of the Christian and Islamic faiths; and waves of globalizing new religions and reform movements. In the modern era “secularization” was advocated by many modernizing elites but was never fully accepted or accomplished in several Asian societies, and even in secularist socialist countries like China or Vietnam we witness a wide range of creative forms of re-sacralization. Vastly different models of state-religion relations can be observed, both in pre-modern and modern times. Religion has, for centuries, travelled and cross-fertilized between different Asian societies along trade routes, transnational networks and new media.

Developing the intellectual tools to analyse and understand these transformations and their implications is of critical importance for grasping the present and future trends of religious, social and political change in Asia, and for engaging in meaningful interreligious dialogue and peace-building. However, several factors have severely limited the development of this intellectual capacity in Asia. Firstly, the secular-religious divide in academia has led to a blind spot in much research and teaching on religion: the social sciences tend to neglect the importance of religion, while departments and institutes of religious studies tend to adopt primarily theological and philosophical approaches which have their limitations in observation and analysis of contemporary religious changes. Secondly, the study of religion in Asia has primarily been conducted in conscious or unconscious reference to Western models, limiting the development of an Asian discourse on religion in Asia. Over the past half-century, with the development of Area studies in the West, the history, anthropology and sociology of religion in India, Southeast Asia and China have evolved in isolation from each other, with the West as the explicit or implicit focus of comparison for each region. While the knowledge and insights generated by these approaches are substantial, there is virtually no conversation at all between scholars of China, India and Indonesia, let alone a conversation that is primarily located in Asia. The goal of this project is thus to promote the emergence of a trans-Asian conversation on religion in Asian societies. This includes facilitating conversations between scholars whose research focus is on different parts of Asia; advancing research on inter-Asian religious connections, influences and networks; building a network of Asian-based scholars of religion in Asia; and contributing to local discourses and debates on religion in Asian societies.

RELIGION AND SOCIETY IN ASIA: INDIA/CHINA/INDONESIA

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIPS

APPLICATION FORM

Surname:

Given names:

Gender:

Citizenship:

Date of birth:

Email:

Postal address:

Institutional affiliation:

Department or research centre:

Academic position:

Academic discipline:

Religious background, if any:

Title of research project:

Please send this form by email by October 31, 2016 to the project convenor for your country, including the following documents:
– Cover letter
– Scanned passport or ID card
– CV
– Writing sample in English
– Research statement (current and planned research over the next three years)

I hereby certify that if I am admitted to the Fellowship, I will commit to attending all three summer schools in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Signed: __________________________________ Date: ________________________