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Plenary Speakers

The Global Studies Conference will feature plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field, as well as numerous parallel presentations by researchers and practitioners.

Garden Conversation Sessions

Plenary Speakers will make formal 30-minute presentations. They will also participate in 60-minute Garden Conversations - unstructured sessions that allow delegates a chance to meet the speakers and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation.

Please return to this page for regular updates.

The Speakers

Min Gong

Min Gong is a Professor of Economics and the Vice Director of the Center for Macroeconomic Research at Xiamen University, Fujian. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from Fudan University, Shanghai, served as a visiting scholar at the Institution for Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and as a Freeman Fellow at the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illiois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research field includes economic growth, macroeconomic policy and international economics.

John M. Hobson

John M. Hobson is Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield, and is co-director of the Political Economy Research. His main research interest lies in the critique of Eurocentrism and the reconstruction of a non-Eurocentric account of inter-civilisational relations, past and present. His two most recent books are: The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (CUP, 2004); Everyday Politics of the World Economy (CUP, 2007 – co-edited with Leonard Seabrooke). He also has edited a volume of J.A. Hobson’s unpublished 1930s lectures entitled The Struggle for the International Mind (Routledge, forthcoming), and is currently finishing off a book manuscript entitled, ‘Defending the Western Interest: Historical Sociology of Eurocentrism in International Theory, 1760-2010’.

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar is teaching Economics in Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University since 1984.

He went to Princeton University USA for Ph.D. in Physics but in 1977 switched to Ph.D. in Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He completed B.Sc. (Physics) from St. Stephens College, India in 1970.

His book `The Black Economy in India’, published by Penguin has broken new ground in thinking about the Indian Economy and its development. He has specialized in Development, Public Finance and Public Policy and Macroeconomics and published many articles in these areas. He has published a book titled `Challenges Facing Indian Universities’ and written extensively on issues pertaining to Higher Education in India. He is currently working on a book on the Indian Economy since Independence.

He authored the Alternative Budgets for 1993-94 and 1994-95 which proposed alternative economic policies for the country. These were presented before a set of eminent citizens of the country. He has been a member of the Group producing the Alternative Economic Survey for the last 15 years. These documents provide an alternative analysis of the official data. He has written extensively on globalization and its impact on the Indian Society and on issues of public policy. The writings have been in academic journals as well in popular press.

Shujiro Yazawa

Shujiro Yazawa has been teaching sociology more than 45 years in Tokyo. He has been Dean of the Graduate School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, 1992-1994. Presently he is Professor of Emeritus, Hitotsubashi University and a full professor of sociology, Faculty of Social Innovation, Seijo University in Tokyo.

He has published 15 books and more than 70 papers in various fields. The following are the best examples of his academic products. “Insurgents Against the Global Order” Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol.20, 1996 (with Manuel Castells and Anna Kiselyova), pp.21-59. “Alberto Melucci e la Sociologia Japonese” in Luisa Leonini ed., Identita e Movementi Sociale in una Societa Planetaria, 2003, pp.184-194. “Two Interpretations of Japanese Network Society” in Georgy Szell et al (ed.), European Social Integration- A Model for East Asia? 2009, pp.239-252. He is a board member of British Journal of Sociology, Chinese Journal of Sociology and New Cultural Frontiers.

He has been quite active in many academic organizations. He is currently President of Japan Sociological Society and a member of the Local Organizing Committee, the 18th World Congress of Sociology in Yokohama. He served for ISA as a member of the Executive Committee from 1994-2002. He has also been a board member of RC47 since 1994. He has been a Japanese representative of East Asian Sociologist Network Conference for eight years. It is trying to build East Asian regional academic community including China.