Write up about the Conference
Conference Theme: Intersecting Belongings: Cultural Conviviality and Cosmopolitan Futures. With around 350 panels spread over a four-day period and more notably, the participation of around 1500 scholars from all-over the world, the Eighth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 8) lived up to its claim as the “largest international network of scholars and experts working on Asia” in the humanities and social sciences. Aiming to engage participants in a (global) dialogue across disciplines, this conference not only provided a venue in which knowledge is shared, but also afforded an exchange between audience and presenters towards a more meaningful understanding of the variety of issues that are particular to the region.
Feedback on paper presented
Although not particularly directed at any of the papers presented in our panel (Rethinking Cosmopolitics: Politicizing the Discourse of Cosmopolitanism in Philippine Studies), the panel as a whole was praised for its attempts at engaging the discourse of cosmopolitanism as a way of making sense of the current Filipino migratory practices that is no longer exclusively driven by economy.
Future directions of research presented
As the promotion of high-rise living in Metropolitan Manila becomes evermore pronounced, the interior-designed space as the quintessential representation of home must be understood to be more than just one of the tools in the property developer’s marketing campaign. In line with this, my research can look deeper into these showrooms with hopes of foregrounding how such spaces impact traditional notions of the home and how these spaces ultimately influence our day to day.
Potential foreign collaborators
Dada Docot of the University of British Columbia
Other important contacts and insights
Short write-up of one’s participation (to be used to feature/publicize the grantee’s participation in the conference)
Louie T. Navarro’s paper entitled “Topologies of Cosmopolitanism: Reconsidering Home, Home‐place and Home Interiors in Migration” presented in the recent Eighth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 8) held in Macao, China last June 24-27, 2013 sought to rethink the migrant population’s dreams of homeownership within the already congested metropolitan Manila. By looking into the continued growth of condominium developments in the metro, his paper afforded a more relevant take on the current housing solution that everyone is enjoined to strive for but in actuality, only few can actually live in given their prohibitive costs.
