The Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies in Asia held its Inaugural Conference, SEASIA 2015, at the Kyoto International Conference Center on December 12-13, 2015. Supported by The Japan Foundation, The Resona Foundation for Asia and Oceania, Japanese Society For Asian Studies, and Kyoto University, the conference’s Call for Proposals attracted some 813 proposals from 268 institutions in 28 countries. The Conference itself was attended by 530 participants from all ten of the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along with Timor Leste and fifteen other countries in Northeast Asia, the United States of America, and Europe. Nearly half of the participants were based in Southeast Asia, and more than seventy percent hailed from the Asia.
Among the highlights of the conference was the ceremony on the evening of December 12, which featured speeches by the Guest of Honor, former Prime Minister of Japan, Mr. Fukuda Yasuo, and keynote addresses by preeminent scholars Professor Wang Gungwu of the East Asia Institute, National University of Singapore, and Professor Pasuk Phongpaichit of Chulalongkorn University.
