What is LAPCSF

London Asia Pacific Cultural Studies Forum 



Contextual Histories
In June 1997, Ted Motohashi, then a visiting fellow at University of Essex, organized a postgraduate conference at Essex on the theme of “Pacific Asia Cultural Studies”, with the help from people like Stuart Hall, Catherine Hall, Peter Hulme, Paul Gilroy, Kuan-hsing Chen and Naoki Sakai.  After that conference, in which a number of postgraduate students coming to London from Asian countries or those researching subjects related to Asia who are interested in Cultural Studies in various ways participated, there arose a voluntary network of students/lecturers who thought that a continuation of the “bottom-up” initiatives materialized in that conference would be vital in reinvigorating cultural studies in London.  Since then, several postgraduate students took leads in organizing regular, biweekly or monthly, seminars and annual international conferences mostly at Goldsmiths College.  That network was later succeeded and developed by Chris Berry of Goldsmiths and then by Shinji Oyama at Birkbeck from 2010 onward.  


Institutional Basis
"London Asia Pacific Cultural Studies Forum (LAPCSF)" is now housed at the Centre for Media, Culture and Creative Practice, Birkbeck College, London with the support from Birkbeck’s Media and Cultural Studies Department, although this forum by definition being a cross London network of people who share common interests and incentives could occasionally have seminars/meetings at some other venues.


Overall Aims and Themes 

We aim to provide those postgraduate students across London who are interested in Cultural Studies with opportunities of developing their own research topics and working their fellow students in a friendly and cooperative environment through presenting their own papers and attending the workshops.