2026 global asias summer institute at penn state

GA:MA Lab PIs co-directed the 2026 Global Asias Summer Institute, together with Dr. Tina Chen, Global Asias Initiative’s Founding Director. Titled Vitalizing Global Asias: Artifacts & Archives, the Institute took place on 8-12 June 2026 at The Pennsylvania State University. 

The week-long program brought together early-career scholars from a range of disciplines and institutions to examine how artifacts and archives shape understandings of Global Asias. The Institute offered a space for participants to develop their own research projects while collectively, through seminars and shared discussions, they engaged with objects, material histories, archival traces and the movement of knowledge across regions and historical contexts. The GA:MA Lab Pis led a visit to the Palmer Museum of Art and a close-viewing session of selected objects from their fantastic collection. The themes and methods explored in the Summer Institute closely align with GA:MA Lab’s ongoing work on transregional cultures and the ways objects carry stories across time and place.

Through this collaboration, GA:MA Lab continues to extend its research conversations beyond the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region while contributing to emerging scholarship on Global Asias.