Our mission

The nations of East, Southeast, and South Asia are home to over one-half of the world’s population and economic growth. Asia currently plays and will continue to play a central role in the issues and challenges of the 21st century: from the management of conflicts and tension arising from population growth and decline, climate change, and resource scarcity; to the successful navigation of political realignments in a newly multipolar world; to managing the lingering after-effects of European imperialism in postcolonial societies.

The Center for Asian Research at ASU supports teaching and research about Asia and its global connections to produce graduates prepared to meet community, national, and international needs in a wide range of sectors. The Center supports ASU’s mission to shape equitable and sustainable global futures and includes a diverse community of scholars and students of Asia through events, conferences, newsletters and research initiatives. Since 2018, the Center for Asian Research has awarded more than 100 Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships, totaling $1.2 million, to ASU graduate and undergraduate fellows enrolled in language and area studies courses.

Center programming highlights our state’s many linkages to Asia. The Arizona Fact Sheet shows that our economy and immigrant communities link this state to countries throughout Asia and to Asian interests globally. In 2021, 27% of Arizona’s export flows went to countries in the Indo-Pacific region. Our state is home to more than 300,000 citizens of Asian descent, and 73% of the state’s international students hail from Asian nations.

The Arizona Board of Regents established ASU’s Center for Asian Studies in 1965. Today, the Center is home to over 80 affiliate faculty members, including senior and junior scholars of East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, with key strengths in the humanities (languages and literatures, media studies, history, religious studies, art history, and music), the social sciences (political science, anthropology, and global studies), and international business and management.

We invite you to register for upcoming lectures and workshops, including our ongoing virtual series, Global Asia in a Multipolar World, which highlights research from prominent scholars in an array of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and beyond, centered on themes such as the environment and sustainability, race, social justice, migration, media and mediation, and public memory. Please explore our website to learn more about CAR-sponsored initiatives such as the Luce Foundation-sponsored Theravada Civilizations project, and Asia Mediated: a collection of online learning modules, developed by ASU faculty, centered on media and social change in Asia.

Contact information

Visit the Contact page to meet our team and view our contacts.