GIGA Institute for Asian Studies

GIGA Institute for Asian Studies

The GIGA Institute for Asian Studies analyses current developments in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and Australasia. Research topics include civil society-state relations, party politics, economic development, China and India in regional and global affairs, and the Indo-Pacific as a strategic space.


  • The GIGA Institute for Asian Studies is exceptional in terms of its geographical scope. It analyses political, social, and economic developments as well as phenomena in and across four Asian world regions: Northeast Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Australasia. It operates at the interstices of Asian Studies and the Social Sciences, with a mix of qualitative, quantitative, and interpretative methods called upon. It builds intellectual bridges and fosters methodological pluralism.

    GIGA’s Asia Institute is well connected locally, nationally, at the European level, and globally – also by means of the GIGA Research Platform Asia which it has operated since 2015. It regularly and prominently contributes to large flagship Hamburg events such as the biannual “India Week” and the “Hamburg Summit: China meets Europe.” The regional institute strongly supports Asian Studies and disciplinary communities. It hosts the Secretariat of the German Association for Asian Studies, has staff who are Board Members of the latter, and was chosen as host and lead institution for the Association’s 50th anniversary conference in 2017. Its Director serves as Chairman of the Board of the Hamburg Foundation Asia Bridge. The Institute is one of the founding members of the European Alliance for Asian Studies. Since 2017 the GIGA has granted several “GIGA India Fellowships” to India specialists to spend time as Visiting Fellows at the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies. Some former Visiting Fellows are now Associates of the institute. Together with its French partner, the Institute for International Studies (CERI) at the SciencesPo Paris, in 2021 the GIGA launched the Franco-German Observatory of the Indo-Pacific, which organises a webinar series, joint conferences, and other exchanges.

    The GIGA Institute for Asian Studies edits, as part of the GIGA Journal Family published by SAGE Publishing, two well-established Open Access journals: the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (since 2017 in cooperation with King’s College London) and the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs (with editors based in Germany and France).


    Secretariat

    Lisa Woike

    Secretary


    Monograph | C.H. Beck | 09/2023

    Wir sind nicht alle: Der Globale Süden und die Ignoranz des Westens

    Der Westen ist nicht mehr der Nabel der Welt. Stattdessen treten die Staaten des Globalen Südens mit neuem Selbstbewusstsein auf. Das Buch diskutiert, warum die Staaten des Globalen Südens so handeln, wie sie es tun, warum deren Skepsis gegenüber dem Westen so tief sitzt – und warum in der neuen Vielfalt auch Chancen liegen.

    Monograph | Oxford Univ. Press | 2023

    Religious Minorities at Risk

    To what extent do minority grievances contribute to intrastate conflict? Based on a novel dataset on 771 religious minorities, the book offers new insights into classic debates on the influences of discrimination, deprivation, and inequality (DDI) on minority grievances and conflict behavior. DDI is a significant cause of minority grievances which, in turn, deeply influence their conflict behaviors.

    Prof. Dr. Jonathan Fox

    Ass. Prof. Dr. Ariel Zellman

    Monograph | C.H. Beck | 09/2023

    Wir sind nicht alle: Der Globale Süden und die Ignoranz des Westens

    Der Westen ist nicht mehr der Nabel der Welt. Stattdessen treten die Staaten des Globalen Südens mit neuem Selbstbewusstsein auf. Das Buch diskutiert, warum die Staaten des Globalen Südens so handeln, wie sie es tun, warum deren Skepsis gegenüber dem Westen so tief sitzt – und warum in der neuen Vielfalt auch Chancen liegen.

    Asian Survey: A Bimonthly Review of Contemporary Asian Affairs | 08/2023

    COVID-19, Anti-Chinese Sentiment, and Foreign Policy Attitudes in South Korea

    COVID-19 generated significant anti-Chinese sentiment in South Korea. Domestic elite-level narratives regarding China at the pandemic’s onset were highly polarized: conservative parties advocated border shutdowns, emphasizing China as originating the virus, while progressive parties warned that this would incite xenophobia. Did these narratives shape anti-Chinese sentiment, and what are their foreign policy effects?

    Blog Article | 08/2023

    A Rose By Any Other Name?: In Defence of the “Global South”

    Nora Kürzdörfer and Amrita Narlikar discuss the utility of the term "Global South" and call for a recognition of the Global South’s umbrella identity, along with key differentiations within it.

    Internationale Politik | 08/2023

    Was ist schon ein Name?

    Vereinfachungen und Kategorisierungen sind allgegenwärtig, siehe „der Westen“ – nur beim Globalen Süden soll das nicht gelten? Warum man an diesem Begriff festhalten sollte. Eine Reaktion auf das IP-Titelthema im Juli/August.

    GIGA Journal Family

    The GIGA Journal Family is published by SAGE Publishing, maintaining the "platinum standard" of the open access model. Excellent contributions by researchers from all over the world are featured in the four journals. To ensure the journals' quality, all essays are evaluated in a double-blind peer-review process.

    GIGA Journal Family

    Research Project | 01/06/2023 - 31/05/2026

    HNC³ - Hamburg Network on Compliance in Cooperation with China

    This project bundles the China expertise of universities and non-university research institutes in the Hamburg metropolitan area. Against the background of current opportunities and challenges in cooperating with China, primary goals of the project include the development of instruments for such cooperation in accordance with legal parameters, the establishment of appropriate exchange formats among the consortium members, and the implementation of relevant training programmes.
    BMBF, 2023-2026

    Research Project | 01/02/2023 - 31/01/2024

    Mapping and Strengthening Civil Society Response to Disinformation

    Governments in autocratic and autocratizing contexts may use anti-fake news laws to discredit critical civil society actors as agents of “disinformation” and punish them. Through comparative and cross-learning insights derived from field studies, we seek to map civil society responses against the autocratic use of disinformation laws and strengthen policies for right to information and freedom of speech and expression.
    NED, 2023-2024

    Research Project | 01/01/2023 - 31/08/2024

    Strengthening Civil Society Against the Weaponization of Anti-Fake News Laws: A Comparison of Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Thailand

    In an age of proliferating disinformation, governments in South and Southeast Asia have come out with anti-fake news laws. However, the “weaponization" of such laws can lead governments to control online platforms and censor critics. Our project examines the patterns and processes of the weaponization of such laws against civic actors and countermeasures by the latter. We aim for academic and policy outcomes to improve disinformation regulation while safeguarding digital rights.
    GIGA, 2023-2024

    Research Project | 01/07/2022 - 30/06/2025

    Transfer for Transformation – Knowledge Exchange with Global Reach (T4T)

    Transfer for Transformation (T4T) is an application lab. Its topical focus are political and economic transformations (also in the digital arena) in the Global South. T4T will innovate in the practice of knowledge transfer through consequent target-group-integration and novel access strategies. It will also advance the scholarship on the subject by analysing the effectiveness and impact of different types of knowledge transfer.
    Leibniz Association, 2022-2025

    Research Project | 15/01/2022 - 14/12/2024

    COVID-19 and Executive Personalization in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the MENA Region

    In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, political leaders reacted by containment measures that, next to combating the spread of the pandemic, also presented a window of opportunity to bolster executives’ personal grasp on power. Personalization of power has been particularly worrying in the Global South where constraints on the chief executives were often already weak prior to the pandemic. This project assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the personalization of executive power in 36 countries of the Global South.
    DFG, 2021-2024

    Research Project | 01/01/2022 - 31/12/2022

    Engaging the Indo-Pacific: German and Korean Perspectives on Regional Cooperation

    A policy-oriented research project bringing together the GIGA and the East Asia Institute in Seoul. The project aims at analysing German/EU and Korean strategies for Indo-Pacific engagement and identifying areas for in-depth consultation, coordination and cooperation.
    Korea Foundation, 2022

    Prof. Dr. Sook-Jong Lee

    Prof. Dr. Yul Sohn

    Prof. Dr. Chaesung Chun

    Research Project | 01/10/2021 - 15/04/2022

    Investigating Supply & Demand Side Factors of a Massive Covid-19 Vaccination Drive: Experimental Evidence from Indonesia

    Indonesia is fighting one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Asia. On January 13, 2021, the country started one of the world’s biggest COVID-19 vaccination drives. The plan is to inoculate 181.5 million people – two third of the population – in 15 months using primarily the CoronaVac from China’s Sinovac Biotech. The vaccination campaign is ambitious and its success hinges on a number of supply and demand side factors which are subject to investigation in this project.
    DFG, 2021-2022

    Research Project | 01/09/2021 - 29/02/2024

    Ensuring Safe, Transparent and Mutually Beneficial Collaboration with China at Analytical Research Infrastructures

    The joint project WIKOOP-INFRA will draw up empirically grounded guidelines that offer researchers from Germany and the EU support and guidance for scientific cooperation with their Chinese colleagues at large research infrastructures under existing framework conditions.
    BMBF, 2021-2024

    Team


    Associated


    Visiting Fellows


    Research Platform Asia

    Exchange and cooperation with scholars from around the world is a decades-long tradition at the GIGA. Since 2015 we have been intensifying and consolidating this cooperation with the help of the GIGA research platforms. 

    The aim of the Asia Research Platform is to intensify cooperation and exchange between science, think tanks, the Federal Foreign Office, political foundations and other partners in the region.

    Research Platforms

    Cooperations

    Scholarly excellence thrives on scholarly exchange, both with other region-specific research institutes and with those that concentrate on theory. At the GIGA, this scholarly exchange also refers to the continued commitment of the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies to cultivating various contacts in Germany and abroad, in both university- and non–university-based research sectors.

    In order to ensure continuous exchange in the areas of information, ideas and research materials and to foster research collaboration, the Institute for Asian Studies maintains a great number of professional relationships with research institutes and libraries in Europe, North America and particularly Asia. The GIGA Institute for Asian Studies is a founding member of the European Alliance for Asian Studies (Asia Alliance). Since 2015 the Asian Studies Institute has organised numerous collaborative international activities under the roof of its Research Platform Asia.

    German Association for Asian Studies

    In Germany the Asian Studies Institute works closely with the German Association for Asian Studies (DGA: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Asienkunde e.V.). It hosts the secretariat of the association and two scholars of the GIGA Institute for Asian Studies currently serve as the DGA’s Managing Director and Deputy Chairperson, respectively.

    President

    Prof. Dr. Amrita Narlikar is President of the GIGA. Her research focuses on international negotiations, economic statecraft, and multilateralism. She has a special interest in India, Asia, and the BRICS.

    Office of the President

    Regional Institutes

    Africa|Asia|Latin America|Middle East

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