Call for panels and papers

The 12th International Conference on Thai Studies (ICTS12) will be held at the University of Sydney, Australia, over three days 22-24 April 2014. The conference is held every three years, hosted alternately by Thai universities and universities outside of Thailand where there is an interest in Thai studies.

This is the first call for contributions to ICTS12. It is also a call for suggestions as to further possible sub-themes to the conference beyond those indicated below. The second call for papers will be posted on 31 March 2013. A third and final reminder will be posted on 30 June 2013.

• Location and important dates
• Sub-themes of the conference
• Forms of presentation
• Leading a panel or discussion
• Structure of the conference
• Research students and early-career academics

Location and important dates for participants

The conference will take place at the Eastern Avenue complex, Camperdown Campus, the University of Sydney, Sydney Australia.
Date: 22–24 April 2014

• Registration opens online: 1 February 2013
• Final date for ‘super-early-bird’ registration: 30 November 2013
• Final date for ‘early-bird’ registration: 31 January 2014
• Offers to organise panels/roundtables due by 1 March 2013
• Abstracts of papers due by 1 September 2013; papers due by 1 March 2014 for those who want them to be distributed in the conference packs
• Notification of accepted papers and offers of panels/roundtables: 1 October 2013
• Offers of posters and video/film presentations due by 10 January 2014

Sub-themes of the conference

Presentations to the conference will cover a wide range of areas of study: the humanities; the social sciences including economic, social and political disciplines; developments in medicine, science and technology; the fine arts, design and architecture; education; environment. This is not an exhaustive list.

The overall theme of the conference is Thailand in the World. The conference organisers particularly encourage the offer of contributions on various sub-themes:

• the global spread of Thai culture: pan- Tai-ism
• the Thai diaspora especially in Europe, North America and Australasia
• the world in Thailand: the expatriate impact on Thailand; institutional change from outside
• Thailand in the coming Southeast Asian economic, social, strategic and cultural communities
• Thailand’s geo-political setting, with special reference to Myanmar, China and the Greater Mekong Sub-region
• Thailand within international communities of education, medicine and scientific and technological research.

Intending participants should not feel bound by this list of possible sub-themes, however, and should feel free to suggest other possibilities and to outline their corresponding offers.

Forms of presentation

Presentations may take various forms. These are:

• individual papers (which will be grouped - generally three to a session - by the conference organisers)
• panel discussions: papers presented in organised panels focusing on single sub-themes and spanning one to three sessions
• round-table discussions on especially topical sub- themes and spanning one session only
• posters
• video and film presentations
• informal discussions of research work in progress led by researchers involved

There will be up to twelve parallel sessions as required. Each session will occupy 1.5 hours.

Leading a panel or discussion

The panel and roundtable discussions will be coordinated by panel and roundtable leaders who will propose their topics and in turn invite other contributors to join them. In the lead-up to the conference, panel and roundtable leaders will be expected to stay in close contact with one or another designated person among the organisers of the conference. Contact persons will be identified after the deadline for offers of panels/roundtables on 1 March 2013.

The leaders of panels will have the discretion

• to invite whomever they wish to participate in a panel,
• to organise the discussion as they see fit (as a set of formal papers or as a roundtable discussion) and
• to propose that the panel should straddle more than one session.

Conference structure

Research students and early-career academics

The organisers are particularly keen to encourage the participation in the Conference of postgraduate research students and early-career academics (people within five years of their first academic appointment), and especially of people in those categories from Thailand and other countries in the Southeast Asian region as well as from Australia. Registration fees of postgraduate research students will be kept as low as possible.

Prizes will be offered to graduate students and to early-career academics for the best poster and the best video/film presentation.

We welcome postgraduate presentations of conventional papers in regular sessions. Additionally, several sessions each day will be devoted to presentations of work in progress by postgraduate research students who are interested in feedback from specialists based at universities other than their own.

Other matters

Prospective presenters of papers and of panel contributions should note that in order to ensure as high a quality of presentations as possible across the whole range of areas of study, only well-considered offers will be taken up. Where selection of presentations has to occur, the organisers will take informed advice on the likely quality of the presentations offered and will have regard to the coherence of the paper / panel offer with the overall theme of the conference.

All prospective participants should note that, while subsidies are not available for travel to or within Australia or for accommodation in Sydney, all efforts will be made to keep costs down. Closer to the dates of the conference, the conference website will show a range of accommodation options near the University.