The University of the Philippines Third World Studies Center is organizing “The Third World Studies Center in Its 40th Year: An International Conference” to celebrate its 40th anniversary this year. This conference will be held on 9-10 February 2017 at the GT Toyota Asian Center Auditorium, Asian Center, University of the Philippines-Diliman.
At forty, the Third World Studies Center gathers in this multidisciplinary conference its vast and resilient network of scholars and public intellectuals, academics and activists, advocates and bearers of unorthodox views from different parts of the globe. The conference aim is twofold. First, it is a time to reflect on the Center’s enduring history and its contributions to critical scholarship on Philippine, regional, and global issues. The Center has encompassed anti-authoritarian scholarship and social movements, peace studies and human security, democratization and critical articulations of the nation, political economy of transnational corporations and the history of mass transit, and digital piracy and cybersex–-pioneering research efforts that established the center as a premier social science research center. Second, the conference will extend the role of the Center as meeting point for established intellectuals and young, emerging scholars. It renews a space that fosters the development of critical, alternative paradigms to promote progressive scholarship and action for change.
Dr. Alfred W. McCoy, Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is the keynote speaker. Two (2) plenary sessions are set aside for the Center’s former Directors and respected scholars whose long academic histories have included doing research in the Philippines as TWSC visiting research fellows. Panelists include former Directors Professor Randy David of the Department of Sociology, Professor Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, Dr. Teresa Encarnacion Tadem, and Dr. Maria Ela Atienza of the Department of Political Science, and Dr. Maria Serena Diokno of the Department of History, University of the Philippines-Diliman; Dr. Teresita Maceda of the Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature of the University of the Philippines-Diliman, Dr. Paul Hutchcroft of the Australian National University, Dr. Johannes Dragsbæk Schmidt of the Aalborg University, Dr. Takushi Ohno of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and Dr. Patricio Abinales of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (TBC). Former TWSC visiting research fellows, contributors to Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies, and members of the TWSC network will be presenting papers in panels centering around TWSC’s current research themes: (1) political economy and globalization, (2) social movements, (3) authoritarianism and democratic governance, (4) peace and human security, (5) culture and identity, and (6) (new) media and technology. Documentaries produced by student interns of TWSC and the University of Montreal will also be screened.
Participants will need to register online at the conference website: http://twscconference.up.edu. ph/.
The two-day conference, which will include snacks, lunch, and a workshop kit, has a subsidized registration fee of PHP 2,000.00. All undergraduate students who will register online from January 15-31, 2017 will only have to pay PHP1,000.00. Payment of the registration fee can be made either at the TWSC office in cash or paid on site.
For any inquiries and/or concerns regarding the conference, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us via twsc.updiliman@up.edu.ph.
