Professor Vasileios Syros is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Military History and Conflict Studies at the United Service Institution of India, India’s oldest and foremost tri-service think tank (est. 1870) for research into national security and military affairs. Prof. Syros is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, and holds a concurrent appointment as Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for European Global Studies at the University of Basel (Switzerland). His areas of interest include the history of medieval and early modern political thought (Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions), strategic leadership, and hybrid/cognitive warfare. Prof. Syros has held research positions and fellowships at Harvard University, Princeton University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Waseda University (Japan), and the Academy of Finland. He served as Full Professor and Greek Chair (sponsored by the Greek Government) at Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) as well as Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Visiting Professor. He has previously taught at Stanford University, McGill University, The University of Chicago, and the École Pratique des Hautes Études.

Ferhat Durmaz is a lecturer at Ankara University’s Department of International Relations, Faculty of Political Sciences in Türkiye. He was also a visiting researcher at KUASIA – Center for Asian Studies at Koç University from 15 December 2022 to 1 September 2023. He was at Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania in May 2023 within the framework of Erasmus teaching mobility. He teaches ‘Regional-Politics: Asia-Pacific’ and ‘Contemporary Global Issues’ at Ankara University. On 23 April 2021, Durmaz received his PhD from the Department of Political Sciences at the International Islamic University of Malaysia. He stayed at Ankara University between February 2015 and March 2016, and at the University of Delaware between June and December 2016 as part of the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of National Education Scholarship Program. His areas of interest include Malaysia’s domestic and foreign policies, Indonesia studies, ASEAN, Chinese foreign policy, Asia-Pacific developments and Turkey foreign policy.

Sandra Uskokovic, a scholar of historic and contemporary Mediterranean and Eastern European art and heritage, is Full-Time Professor at the University of Dubrovnik, Croatia.

She holds a MA in American Studies (Historic Preservation) from the George Washington University, USA and a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She worked as research fellow at ICCROM, UNESCO and US/ICOMOS, and received grants from Getty Trust. Uskokovic has published four books on heritage and architecture. Her last book has that opens questions about postsocialism Anthropocene been published by UPI2M books, Anamnesis: Art Dialogues in Public Space (2018). She also has written and published numerous conference papers and research articles in her home country and abroad. A visiting scholar at universities in Europe, Asia, and North America, her research interests include critical heritage studies, modern architecture and contemporary art, urban and cultural studies, and performative arts. Expert member of ISC20 and of Association of Critical Heritage Studies. During her sabbatical leave, in Autumn 2022 she has been granted a position of Visiting Scholar at Center for Asian Studies at Koç University in Istanbul (KUASIA) and during late Spring/Summer 2023 she has been working as a Visiting Research Fellow at Humboldt University, Berlin at the Institute for Art and Visual History, concluding with Visiting Research Fellowship at UCL, Institute for Advanced Studies (during Fall 2023).

Rebecca is a current KUASIA Visiting Scholar and final-year PhD candidate at the University of Leeds (UK), where she is completing a project on Facebook-mediated expressions of Thai identities within the perspective of social semiotic multimodality. At Leeds, she has taught undergraduate Thai- language and digital communications modules. She was a scholar-in-residence at the Library of Congress (USA) in 2019 and held research affiliations with Silpakorn University (Thailand) in 2016 and 2018.

Pallavi Narayan is the author of Pamuk's Istanbul: The Self and the City (London: Routledge, April 2022); her co-edited anthology Singapore at Home: Life across Lines (Singapore: Kitaab, 2021) was launched at the Singapore Writers Festival 2021. In 2018, she was named the first Frankfurt Fellow from Singapore to the Frankfurter Buchmesse Fellowship Programme for publishing professionals. In 2019, she was the sole scholar from Asia (Nanyang Technological University) at the CHCI-Mellon Global Humanities Institute on ``Theoretical Issues: Practical Densities: Violence, Memory and the Untranslatable`` in Santiago, Chile (co-organized by Universidad de Chile, University of the Western Cape, Oxford University, and University of California at Irvine). Through 2020-21, she was a scholar at the CHCI-Mellon Global Humanities Institute on ``Migration, Logistics and Unequal Citizens in Contemporary Global Context`` in Hsinchu, Taiwan (co-organized by National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, University of Malaya, Mahidol University, Western Sydney University, Polish Academy of Sciences, Toc Duc Thang University, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hong Kong University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Chung-Ang University, Yonsei University, and Hanyang University). Through 2021, she was a Fellow of the South Asia Speaks Literary Fellowship. Dr Narayan has held positions at Nanyang Technological University Centre for Contemporary Art, National University of Singapore Press, Singapore Management University Centre for Management Practice, Penguin Random House, Pan Macmillan, and Routledge. Currently she is an Associate Professor at the School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, O.P. Jindal Global University. She was awarded her PhD in 2016 from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. At KUASIA, she is writing on Istanbul and Delhi literary-ethnographicand artistic terms, and migration.

Ömer Faruk Çıngır is a Human Rights Activist and PhD Candidate at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Malaya. His PhD thesis related to Indonesian and Filipino Irregular Immigrants in Sabah so he did fieldwork in Sabah, Borneo. He has been to many villages to conduct surveys and interviews in Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan, Semporna, Lahad Datu and Tawau (Kampung Inanam Laut, Kampung Kedayan, Kampung Melayu, Kampung Titingan, Kampung Bangau Bangau). His main academic interests are Southeast Asian Studies, irregular migration flows, human rights and migrant workers, sociology of religion and political sociology.

Dr. Küçükyalçın has completed his Ph.D. at Boğaziçi University, Dept. of History in the field of Japanese History. At present, he is giving lectures at the Asian Studies Center in the same university on various subjects including Asian history, Japanese history, Japanese Management Techniques and Know-how – Art of War and Strategic Leadership, History of Writing, and Japanese Translation. He is also the founder of “Musashi Dojo – School of Creative Leadership” at Japanese Art Center, where he teaches shodo (calligraphy) in combination with Bushido (Way of the Samurai). Dr. Küçükyalçın is the editor-in-chief of “Global Perspectives on Japan”, a yearly academic journal in English and the author of the following books in Turkish: Miyamoto Musashi and the Book of Five Rings – On Art of War and Leadership (2021), The Samurai (2019), The Book of Five Rings – Art of War and Strategic Leadership (2017), The Age of the Samurai – Milestones of Japanese History (2013), Count Otani Kozui and Türkiye (2010), The Heart of the Crane–Janissary Brotherhood and the Order of Bektashism (2010), and a historical novel The Seven Towers – Why was Sultan Osman the Young was Killed?(2013).

Mina Kozluca is a research assistant in the Koç-Renmin Joint Seed Fund project titled “The Growth and Structural Effects of the Belt and Road Initiative on the Turkish Economy.” Kozluca is a prospective Ph.D. student in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has recently gained an MSc degree in Development Studies from SOAS, the University of London, as a Jean Monnet Scholar. Kozluca completed her bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Sociology at Koç University in 2019. Her research interests include the political economy of development, agrarian change and development, and labor studies. Kozluca’s paper (co-authored with Burak Gürel) titled “The Unrest and Relative Empowerment of the Working Class in Contemporary China” was published in the METU Studies in Development in 2019.

Burcu Ermeydan is a PhD candidate in International Relations at Kadir Has University, where she is also working as a research assistant. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Political Science and International Relations from Middle East Technical University, Northern Cyprus Campus. In her master’s thesis, she studied financial regionalism in East Asia. During her graduate years, she worked as a teaching assistant and assisted two different research projects on economic history. Currently, she is working on her PhD thesis at Kadir Has University with focusing on the overlapping regionalism in shaping economic regionalism in East Asia. She has authored three book chapters on East Asian regionalism, and she is working on new studies on ASEAN, regional cooperation in East Asia and reflection of Asian studies in Türkiye. Her research areas are international political economy, regionalism in international relations, East Asian politics and research methods in social sciences.

Emek Yılmaz is a coordinator of the Panorama 1326 Bursa Museum and is in charge of communications and special projects position at the European Museum Academy (EMA). She completed her Ph.D. in sociology at the Kangwon National University, S. Korea. Her research was on how city museums construct city identity and she conducted a comparative case study in two city museums: Seoul Museum of History and Bursa City Museum. Her research interests include heritage studies, social inclusion, museums as social arenas, digital applications, and its impact on museum visitor studies especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. She is particularly interested in how S. Korean cultural and creative sectors tackle Covid-19. She is also involved in two EU projects: SoPHIA – Social Platform for Holistic Heritage Impact Assessment funded under the Horizon 2020 programme; and MOI! – Museums of Impact! Funded under the Creative Europe programme.

Esra Gökçe Şahin has completed her Ph.D. in social anthropology at Harvard University, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice. She has been conducting research on performance, media, and creative industries with a focus on memory politics, semiotics and gender in Japan. Şahin taught undergraduate level courses on anthropology of media, digital platforms, and linguistic anthropology. She also taught graduate level courses on subjects as media, publicity, and gender performance in Japan. Additionally, Şahin is trained as a performer of traditional Japanese comedy, rakugo, and she held stage performances in various venues in Tokyo.As an ethnographic filmmaker, Şahin is interested in exploring the sensory modes of communication, memory and representation. Şahin has forthcoming articles based on the anthropological analysis of memory politics and gender in contemporary Japan, reflected through the critical lens of rakugo humor. She is also working on her book manuscript, Rakugo Humor: Memory Politics and Japan’s Urban Laughter.

Sirma Altun is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Economy, The University of Sydney.Her research looks at the production of urban space in Hong Kong and Taipei, two global cities inAsia. She explores top-down and differential dynamics of global city formation inHong Kong and Taipei from spatial political economy perspective

Joel Andreas is a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University. He completed his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include political contention, social inequality, and social change in contemporary China. Andreas served as the director of the East Asian Studies Program at Johns Hopkins from 2011 to 2013. He teaches social theory at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as courses on political sociology and contemporary Chinese society. He has held visiting positions at the University of Sydney, the University of Adelaide, and Hong Kong University. His first book titled Rise of the red engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the origins of China’s new class was published by Stanford University Press in 2009. His second book, Disenfranchised: The rise and fall of industrial citizenship in China, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019.

For more information on Andreas’s work: https://soc.jhu.edu/directory/joel-andreas/