In meetings with Prof. Takahiro Nakajima, Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, and Prof. Shigeto Sonoda, further possibilities for cooperation between the two institutions and in the context of the Katekisama program were addressed. Both institutions signed an academic exchange agreement in the spring of 2025. To facilitate a content-driven form of exchange, a hybrid workshop with 20 participants on the topic of “Politics of Immobility, Paradox, and Area Studies in Global Era” was offered. After a welcoming address by Prof. Shigeto Sonada, outlining the IASA’s Global Asian Studies Program and detailing the IASA’s position in the Katekisama-program, Prof. Pattajit Tangsinmunkong, Prof. Jiyoon Kim and Prof. Shigeto Sonoda commented on the paper “Politics of Immobility: Global Knowledge Production and the Study of Europe in Asia”, co-authored by Prof. Ralph Weber and Dr. Silvana Târlea. In the ensuing discussions, the workshop participants identified shared research interests touching on questions linked to the challenges in global knowledge production such as the (im)mobility of knowledge, institutional challenges and the challenges of area studies.  

We are looking forward to a fruitful collaboration! 

About the Katekisama Program 

The Katekisama program is a global approach to academic collaboration. It offers young scholars and senior researchers an original and vibrant platform of interdisciplinary, cooperative education and research that enables them to critically explore and analyze today’s global complexities. Scholars and PhD students gain from the excellence, experience and global expertise in the social sciences, humanities and law, and from their new and exclusive forms of academic mobility, forging academic and personal links between partner institutions. Katekisama cooperation partners are currently the Institute for European Global Studies of the University of Basel, the Faculty of Arts of the University of Bonn, the College of Humanities of the University of Ghana, the Law School of Ribeirão Preto of the University of São Paulo and the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia of the University of Tokyo. 

Ralph Weber is Professor for European Global Studies at the Institute for European Global Studies, Academic Director of its Graduate Program and a Research Councilor at the Swiss National Science Foundation. He specializes on methodological and conceptual aspects of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research, the global history of political ideas and Chinese politics, particularly the Chinese party-state and its transgressive political activities abroad