The programme includes a wide range of topics: global exchanges and connections of commodities, plants, animals, ideas, religions, technologies, arts, innovations, diseases as well as humans from/to Asia or in Asia. It also include the process of modernization in Asian countries as well as the alternative origins of modernity in Asia. In the themes, "Asia" is broadly defined enough to include the pacific region as well as West Asia.

Key Note Speakers:
Arif Dirlik
He most recently (Fall 2011) held the the Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India. Dirlik taught at Duke University for thirty years as professor of history and anthropology before moving in 2001 to the University of Oregon where he served as Knight Professor of Social Science. He is the author of more than 200 articles on subjects ranging from Chinese history and historiography to issues of globalization and the Pacific region to theoretical discussions of postcolonial criticism and postmodernity. Dirlik has served or continues to serve on the editorial boards of several academic journals. He is the editor of two book series, Studies in Global Modernity (SUNY Press), and Asian Modernities (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press). Dirlik’s works have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Bulgarian, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. His publications in English include, Revolution and History: Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1991-1937, Origins of Chinese Communism; The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism; Postmodernity’s Histories, and, most recently, Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism.

Dennis O. Flynn
(Alexander R. Heron Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of the Pacific) has researched 16th- 18th century global monetary history since the 1970s. Publications since 1995 (with Arturo Giráldez, University of the Pacific) focused largely on the “Birth of Globalization” in the sixteenth century, which involved interaction of global silver flows (mostly from Spanish America and Japan) with environmental, epidemiological, demographic, and cultural interconnections across the earth over subsequent centuries. He has recently turned his attention to a formal theory that has underlaid his historical research for more than twenty-five years, the “Unified Theory of Prices” (UTP). A “Hydraulic Metaphor” (co-created with Marie A. Lee, University of the Pacific) is an intuitive/visual version of the UTP designed to convey essentials of this unconventional economic theory to a general audience (see www.unifiedtheory ofprices.org). Professor Flynn has published over sixty scholarly articles, authored/edited a dozen volumes, and was General Editor (with Arturo Giráldez) of a seventeen-volume series, The Pacific World: Lands, Peoples, and History of the Pacific, 1500-1900 (Aldershot, England: Ashgate/Variorum, 1999-2000).

Tae-jin Yi
is Chairman of National Institute of Korean History (see http://wwwe.history.go.kr/) and Professor Emeritus of Seoul National University, where he had taught since 1973. He is the author of over 150 articles and over 20 books including Han’guk sahoe saron [Studies on the Social History of Korea, 1896], Choson yugyo sahoe saron [The Social History of Confucianism in Choson, 1989] and Kojong sid’ae ui chaejomyong [Reexamination of the History of the King Kojong Era, 2000]. He published The Dynamics of Confucianism and Modernization in Korean History in the Cornell East Asia Series 136 with help of Prof. Michael Shin, translation editor in 2007. He has also edited several volumes and compilations such as Han’guk pyonghap ui pulbopsong yon’gu [Studies on the illegality of the Japanese Annexation of Korea, 2003]. He has studied the Little Ice Age phenomena, analyzing the records of Annals of Choson Dynasty (Korea) in the viewpoint of the asteroid terrestrial impact theory. The first work, "Meteor Fallings and Other Natural Phenomena Between c. 1500-1750 As Recorded in the Annals of the Choson Dynasty (Korea)," was published at the Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy in 1998. At Seoul National University, he served as the Director of the Kyujanggak Archives and the Director of the Institute of Korean Studies. He was the Dean of the College of Humanities from September 2006 to August 2008. He has served on the editorial board of many journals, was the President of the Chindan Hakhoe [Chindan Society], the Yoksa Hakhoe [Korean Historical Association], and the Korean Association Academic Societies, and has served on the Cultural Properties Committee of the Seoul City Government and the ROK Government.

Organizing Committee:
Shingo Minamizuka (Hosei University, Japan, President)
Ji-Hyung CHO (Ewha University, Executive Secretary of the AAWH)
Young-Seo BAIK (Yonsei University)
Sun-Joo KANG (Gyeongin National University of Education)
Gi-Bong KiM (Kyonggi University)
Yong-Woo KIM (Ewha University)
Young-Suk LEE (Gwangju University)
Meung-Hoan NOH (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)
Hae-Dong YUN (Sungkyunkwan University)