We invite scholars of various academic fields of humanities and social science to submit presentation proposals to an academic conference “Resilient Memories in East Asia: Remembrance, Acknowledgment, Reconciliation” which will be held at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU, Kaunas, Lithuania) on October 10–11, 2025.

As East Asia navigates its histories of war, colonization, and ideological conflict, the resilience of collective memory plays a crucial role in shaping both domestic and international relations. This conference considers memory as a living process that resists simple narratives, focusing on how communities remember the past, how societies acknowledge historical injustices, and how reconciliation can be pursued in a complex landscape of competing memories and political tensions.

With all this in mind, the conference Resilient Memories in East Asia: Remembrance, Acknowledgment, Reconciliation will encourage scholars, practitioners, and students from a range of disciplines to examine the complex dynamics of memory in East Asia and explore how memory shapes and is shaped by historical trauma, collective narratives, and contemporary identities in the region. A special attention will be given to Taiwan’s case which encompasses multiple aspects related to the conference’s theme.

The organisers of the conference invite participants from various academic fields to present their original research that is focused on aforementioned topics and include cases from East Asia (Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, etc.). The conference is not limited to one approach and encourages submission of proposals that can be classified under different fields of humanities and social sciences: anthropology, ethnology, history, sociology, economics, political science, etc. The working language of the conference is English.

Panel and individual paper proposals can be submitted by filling a form and sending it by email to conference.asc@vdu.lt by July 15, 2025. More information is provided in the application form.

The conference is organized by VMU Centre for Asian Studies and supported by Spotlight Taiwan.

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