The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) > People > International Academic Advisory Board > Cultural & Area Studies

Cultural & Area Studies

  • Professor Umberto Ansaldo*
    Professor Umberto Ansaldo*
    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
  • Keiko Bang*
    Keiko Bang*
    Bang Singapore Pte Ltd
  • Professor John Nguyet Erni
    Professor John Nguyet Erni
    Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
  • Professor Gerard Goggin
    Professor Gerard Goggin
    Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
  • Dr Sue Ballyn
    Dr Sue Ballyn
    Barcelona University, Spain
  • Professor Holger Briel**
    Professor Holger Briel**
    Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China
  • Professor Ljiljana Markovic
    Professor Ljiljana Markovic
    University of Belgrade, Serbia
  • Professor Kuniko Miyanaga
    Professor Kuniko Miyanaga
    Human Potential Institute, Japan
  • Professor Baden Offord
    Professor Baden Offord
    Curtin University, Australia
  • Dr Seiko Yasumoto**
    Dr Seiko Yasumoto**
    University of Sydney, Australia
  • Professor Donald E. Hall*
    Professor Donald E. Hall*
    Binghamton University, United States
  • Dr Maxime Jaffré*
    Dr Maxime Jaffré*
    United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates
  • Dr Elena Raevskikh*
    Dr Elena Raevskikh*
    Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

* attached to more than one section
** journal editor

The role of the International Academic Advisory Board is to provide advice and expertise in support of IAFOR’s mission and activities. Members are appointed by the President of IAFOR to one or more academic sections, depending on their individual area(s) of expertise.

Membership of the IAAB is for three years, renewable once, and is by invitation only. Journal Editors are ex-officio members of the Board for the length in which they serve.

The IAAB is organised into three academic divisions, and then further into sections, each of which has a Chair responsible for academic programmes and publications, and who serves as a representative on the Academic Governing Board.

I – Education & Language Learning

II – Social Sciences & Sustainability

III – Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture

Professor Umberto Ansaldo*
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Biography

Umberto Ansaldo started his academic path as a student of Chinese language and literature at the University of Venice, Italy, and went on to earn a PhD in linguistics from the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Since then he has been conducting research on languages of East, South, and Southeast Asia with a focus on socio-historical and typological processes. He has also published and edited a number of volumes and articles on Pidgin and Creole languages, their evolution and their historiography. Between 2005 and 2010 Professor Ansaldo led a project that resulted in a comprehensive description and documentation of an endangered contact language known as Sri Lanka Malay. In 2017 he launched the journal Language Ecology with John Benjamins.

In the past two decades Professor Ansaldo has taught at the National University of Singapore, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Hong Kong, where he now heads the School of Humanities. Besides linguistics he has taught courses on modern Asia, conflict studies, and self-defence, and his most recent interest is in higher education management and academic leadership. In July 2018 he will take up a new post as Head of the School of Literature, Arts and Media (SLAM) at the University of Sydney to focus primarily on these aspects of academia.

Outside of work, Umberto is a keen practitioner of martial arts, which he has studied for over 2 decades. He also travels as frequently as possible, occasionally trying to learn a new language, most recently Japanese.

*Professor Umberto Ansaldo is attached to more than one section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Keiko Bang*
Bang Singapore Pte Ltd

Biography

Keiko Hagihara Bang is the founder and CEO of Bang Singapore Pte Ltd, a boutique media firm focused on fandom, influencers, branded content, e-commerce and technology-led storytelling. Her 35-year career spans time serving as a reporter for media such as CNN, NHK and what is today CNBC, and as a creator of critically-acclaimed independent documentaries for the world, from the Asia-Pacific region. She has produced more than 50 award-winning films including: Zheng He: Emperor of the Seas, Mysterious Hanging Coffins of China, Guge: The Lost Kingdom of Tibet, Jackie Chan, John Woo, Hip Korea, Secrets of the Samurai and many others.

In Japan, she successfully created a landmark co-production with PBS, TV Asahi and ZDF of the first non-Japanese documentary on the Battleship Yamato as seen from the Japanese point of view. Bang also worked for 5 years with the Ministry of Information and Communications (Somusho) on pioneering co-production schemes which engendered more than 40 hours of programming between rural Japanese broadcasters and other Asian countries, and culminated in Bang’s launch of Asian Side of the Doc (French) in Tokyo, the first ever major documentary conference to be held in Japan. Bang was also the first independent Asian production company to rank on Realscreen’s “World’s 100 Most Influential Documentary Companies”. In addition to her work on the creative side, Keiko is a serial entrepreneur and has worked with more than 150 companies, 7 governments and 50 media partners on co-productions, country branding and C-Level media strategy across twenty-four countries in Asia. Bang is a Member of the International Academy of Arts & Sciences, Chairperson of the New Media Taskforce and Advisor to the Documentary Committee of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, and to the VR Braintrust (IDFA). She is also a Member of the Asian Academy Awards, and Advisor to the Emerging Future Institute, The Rohingya Blockchain Project, and Teach North Korean Refugees. She is the Founder of The Beautiful Minds Global Girls’ Education Broadcaster Project with UNESCO.

*Keiko Bang is attached to more than one section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Professor John Nguyet Erni
Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Biography

John Nguyet Erni is Fung Hon Chu Endowed Chair Professor of Humanics and Head of the Department of Humanities & Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. In 2017, he was elected President of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. A former recipient of the Gustafson, Rockefeller, and Annenberg research fellowships, and many other awards and grants, Erni’s wide-ranging work traverses international and Asia-based cultural studies, human rights legal criticism, Chinese consumption of transnational culture, gender and sexuality in media culture, youth consumption culture in Hong Kong and Asia, and critical public health. He is the author or editor of 10 books, most recently Visuality, Emotions, and Minority Culture: Feeling Ethnic (2017, Springer); (In)visible Colors: Images of Non-Chinese in Hong Kong Cinema – A Filmography, 1970s--2010s (with Louis Ho, Cinezin Press, 2016); Understanding South Asian Minorities in Hong Kong (with Lisa Leung, HKUP, 2014). Currently, he is completing a book entitled Law and Cultural Studies: A Critical Rearticulation of Human Rights.

Professor Gerard Goggin
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Biography

Gerard Goggin is the Wee Kim Wee Chair in Communication Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Goggin is an internationally renowned scholar in communication, cultural, and media studies, whose pioneering research on the cultural and social dynamics of digital technology has been widely influential.

He has made benchmark contributions to the understanding of mobile communication, international Internets and their histories, with key books such as Cell Phone Culture (2006), Global Mobile Media (2011), Routledge Companion to Mobile Media (2014), Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories (2017) and Location Technology in International Contexts (2020). Goggin is also a world-leading researcher in the area of accessibility, digital technology, justice, and rights, especially relating to the cutting-edge area of disability. In this area, he has published a number of collaborative authored and edited books including Digital Disability (2003), Disability in Australia (2005), Disability and the Media (2015), Normality & Disability (2018), and the Routledge Companion to Disability and Media (2020).

Professor Goggin has had a longstanding engagement in communications, technology, and social policy, and was a founding board member of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN). In 2018 he was the Chair of the Humanities and Creative Arts Panel of the inaugural Australian Research Council Engagement & Impact assessment.

In recognition of his contributions to the study of communication, Professor Goggin was made a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and a Fellow of the International Communication Association. Currently he serves as Secretary-General of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).

Dr Sue Ballyn
Barcelona University, Spain

Biography

Dr Sue Ballyn is the Founder and Honorary Director of the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies Centre at the University of Barcelona from where she graduated with a BA in 1982. Her MA thesis on the writings of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes won the Faculty prize in 1983. In 1986 she won the Faculty prize again, this time for her PhD thesis on Australian Poetry, the first PhD on Australian Literature in Spain.

She joined the English and German Philology Department on graduation 1982 and has remained at the university ever since. In 1990 she founded the Australian Studies Program which was recognised as an official University of Barcelona Observatory - Studies Centre in 2000, known as CEA, Observatorio Centre d’Estudis Australians. It is the only Australian Studies Centre in Spain and one of the most active in Europe.

Over the last twenty-five years, Sue Ballyn’s research has been focused on foreign convicts transported to Australia, in particular Spanish, Portuguese, Hispanics and Sephardim, and she works closely with the Female Convicts Research Centre, Tasmania. She has published and lectured widely in the area, very often in collaboration with Professor Lucy Frost. May 25th 2018 will see the publication of a book on Adelaide de la Thoreza, a Spanish convict, written by herself and Lucy Frost.

More recently she has become involved in a project on ageing in literature DEDAL-LIT at Lleida University which in turn formed part of a European project on ageing: SIforAge. As part of this project she is working on Human Rights and the Elderly, an area she started to research in 1992. In 2020 a book of interviews with elderly women, with the working title Stories of Experience, will be published as a result of this project. These oral stories are drawn from field work she has carried out in Barcelona.

She was recently involved in a ministry funded Project, run out of the Australian Studies Centre and headed by Dr Bill Phillips, on Postcolonial Crime Fiction (POCRIF). This last project has inevitably intertwined itself with her work on convicts and Australia. Her present work focuses on Sephardi Jews in Asian diaspora, and the construction of ageing.

Professor Holger Briel**
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China

Biography

Professor Holger Briel from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University is the editor of the IAFOR Journal on Cultural Studies. Professor Briel holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Theory from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University Michigan, Ann Arbor. He also holds a B.A. in English from Eberhardt- Karls-Uiversitat Tubingen, Germany. Professor Briel also completed a portion of his graduate studies at the Universite de Paris, Sorbonne. Professor Briel has taught at several universities in the past including: UGSM-Monarch Business School (Switzerland), the Department of Communications & Media Studies at the University of Nicosia (Cyprus), the University of Innsbruck, Austria, the New York University Skopje (Macedonia) where he held Vice-Rector and Deanship positions, Aristotle University Thessaloniki, and the University of Athens (Greece) and the University of Surrey (UK). Over the years he has been the recipient of many research grants and fellowships and is a well-published academic with many books, book chapters and peer reviewed articles on Cultural Studies. Professor Briel is also a member of the EU Council for Higher Education.

**Professor Holger Briel is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Cultural Studies.

Professor Ljiljana Markovic
University of Belgrade, Serbia

Biography

Dr Ljiljana Markovic is Dean, Chairperson of the Doctoral Studies Program and Full Professor in Japanese Studies at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. She has previously served as Vice Dean for Financial Affairs, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade (2008-2016). She holds the positions of Chairperson of the Association of Japanologists of Serbia, Member of the University of Belgrade Council, Chairperson of the University of Belgrade SYLFF Committee, Member of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Bilingual Education Board, and Member of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Culture, Committee on Books Procurement for Public Libraries. In 2010 she received the Gaimu Daijin Sho Award from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and in 2011 she received the Dositej Obradovic Award for Pedagogical Achievement. She is the author of a large number of publications in the fields of Japanese studies and economics.

Professor Kuniko Miyanaga
Human Potential Institute, Japan

Biography

Kuniko Miyanaga is a cultural anthropologist and linguist and works on questions of globalization, identity and language. She has taught at the International Christian University in Tokyo (1974-2002), and from 2005 she joined the faculty at Tama University, as a Professor of Anthropology, also serving as Dean of the School. Professor Miyanaga is the founding and current director of the Human Potential Institute NPO. She has taught for periods abroad at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and was a Fulbright Scholar at St Michaels College, VT. USA. Professor Miyanaga has also been a Visiting Scholar at the universities of Boston, Harvard, and Stanford in the USA, and Oxford in the UK through the Japan Foundation.

Professor Baden Offord
Curtin University, Australia

Biography

Baden Offord is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Curtin University, Australia. Born in Aotearoa/New Zealand of Māori and Pākehā heritage, he has lived most of his life in Australia, as well as several years in Spain, South India, and Japan. An internationally respected scholar in human rights, education, sexuality and culture, his latest book (co-edited with Fleay, Hartley, Woldeyes and Chan) is Activating Cultural and Social Change: The Pedagogies of Human Rights (London, Routledge: 2022).

Professor Offord has held academic appointments as the Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights in the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University (2015-2020); as Chair (Visiting Professor) of Australian Studies, Centre for Pacific and American Studies at The University of Tokyo (2010-2011); as Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona; and as Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Southern Cross University (1999-2014). He has also had visiting positions at Indiana University, the University of Auckland, and La Trobe University. In 2021 he was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) ‘for distinguished service in tertiary education in the field of human rights, social justice and cultural diversity.'

Professor Offord is a member of IAFOR’s Academic Governing Board. He is Chair of the Cultural & Area Studies section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Dr Seiko Yasumoto**
University of Sydney, Australia

Biography

Dr Seiko Yasumoto lectures and carries out research on Japanese and East Asian media and cultural studies at the University of Sydney. Her primary research, which she has published widely, includes Japanese government media policy and broadcasting media within the domain of popular culture. The scope includes transmission of content, textual analysis, copyright, media industries, adaptation theory, youth culture, audience analysis and trans-national media cultural flows in Japan and East Asia. She is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies, guest editor of the Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia special edition on Global Media 2010 and co-editor of the scholarly journal Ilha Do Desterro a Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies: Expression, Identity and Society.Vol.2006. She was the Japan and North, East Asia regional representative of the Asian Studies of Association of Australia (2009-2012), is an editorial board member of the Oriental Society of Australia, the East Asian Popular Culture Association and Journalism and Mass communication USA. She holds a prestigious Teaching Excellence Award from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney, Australia.

**Professor Dr Seiko Yasumoto is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies.

Professor Donald E. Hall*
Binghamton University, United States

Biography

Donald E. Hall is Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Binghamton University (SUNY), USA. He was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA, and held a previous position as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Provost Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.

*Professor Donald E. Hall is attached to more than one section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Dr Maxime Jaffré*
United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates

Biography

Dr Maxime Jaffré is currently Assistant Professor at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). Before joining UAEU, Dr Maxime Jaffré worked as Research Fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), at the Centre Norbert Elias in Marseille, France. He holds a PhD in sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). He defended a PhD thesis entitled “The globalization of culture and the spirit of Arabic music: a sociology of scholarly Arabic musical forms decontextualized in France and in the US”.

Dr Maxime Jaffré also worked as research assistant at the University of Chicago with Prof. Terry Nichols Clark, where he analyzed the social and political dynamics of cities and culture in France and internationally. Since 2013, he is involved in the ANR-Curricula research project funded by the French National Research Agency (500K€), which aims at analyzing the reorganization of cultural institutions in cities designated “European Capitals of Culture” in four European countries (France, Sweden, Poland and Italy). Since 2018, he is working on a research project on "Multiculturalism and Tolerance in the UAE" founded by the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU).

*Dr Maxime Jaffré is attached to more than one section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Dr Elena Raevskikh*
Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Biography

Dr Elena Raevskikh is a research fellow at the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. She holds a PhD in sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) (France), and a Master’s degree in international public law from the Lomonosov Moscow State University Law Faculty (Russia). She supports CultureSTATS-AD project that aims to produce internationally recognizable and comparable cultural statistics in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. By structuring pre-existing cultural data as well by exploring the new approaches to data collection and analysis, the project seeks to understand how to enhance the impact of culture and cultural assets on the social and economic growth of Abu Dhabi, and how to discover, analyse and support cultural phenomena that makes Abu Dhabi unique. For this project, Dr Raevskikh is developing new conceptual and methodological approaches to the legitimate articulation of locally anchored and internationally comparable dimensions of the evolving culture statistics system.

*Dr Elena Raevskikh is attached to more than one section of the International Academic Advisory Board.