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During June 18-20, 2026, APSI and the Environmental Research Center at Duke Kunshan University co-hosted the third EFAN meeting at Duke Kunshan University.

Under the theme “Green Transitions,” and with a humanities- and social science-centered perspective, the Kunshan Workshop attracted over 50 participants from renowned institutions across the Asia-Pacific region, including Duke University, Princeton University, Rice University, the University of Pennsylvania, the National University of Singapore, Jeju National University, Fulbright University Vietnam, the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Concordia University (Canada), the Université de Montréal (Canada), Mindanao State University (Philippines), and Beijing Normal University, as well as faculty representatives from the Environmental Research Center, the Center for the Study of Contemporary China, and the Humanities Center at Duke Kunshan University. Undergraduate students from DKU provided invaluable support throughout the workshop.

EFAN is a praxis of the most pressing needs of our time: think global, care for the environment, and remain connected. Little compares to an EFAN academic experience, where you find like-minded people, future collaborators, and, at times, lifelong friends.””

—Yanping Ni, PhD candidate, Princeton University

Keynote Address

The conference opened with a keynote address titled “Metabolism of the Petrostate” delivered by Dominic Boyer, Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and a member of the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association. Professor Boyer’s talk highlighted how fossil fuel infrastructure enables state domination, prompting us to consider whether petropower itself is a form of rule. It examined the entangled relation between states worldwide and the fossil fuel infrastructure as a metabolism that thrives upon their mutual dependence.

Alongside illuminating the challenge of ending current oil dependency, the talk warned us about the enduring systems of power that may persist even after the decline of fossil-fuel regimes. In response, Professor Boyer proposed several creative means to undermine the dominance of petropower through structural reform with “bestiary” forces, self-transformation with “shape-shifting” potentials, and the gradual decomposition of the petrostate with “microbic” power. The forms of energy evoked in these examples point to new frontiers of resistance against the petrostate’s pervasive power.

Parallel Thematic Panels

Following the keynote, the conference featured two parallel sessions comprising eight panels, with a total of forty invited paper presentations. Scholars engaged in in-depth discussions and exchanges on core topics such as energy transition, critical minerals, and green finance from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, history, political science, public policy, and media studies.

Explore the full conference agenda to learn more about the speakers and their presentations.

I want to think about the relationship between people and natural resources. If we change the relationship in the right direction, we can understand and guide the new ways of thinking about them.”

—Professor Hyun Choe, Jeju National University

The panel discussions covered a broad range of topics related to the current state of energy transitions in Asia, where reliance on fossil fuels persists even as new energy projects sprout with strong momentum. These endeavors shape (and reshape) natural landscapes, human-animal relations, economic development, and local culture. In the search for a just energy transition, many EFAN panelists highlighted and envisioned paths to engage the violence and inequality generated by existing and emerging energy infrastructures.

Participants in the community garden were initially very enthusiastic. They thought they would be able to replace their entire grocery purchases of vegetables with what they were able to grow themselves. They soon discovered this involved literally getting their hands in the dirt.”

—Professor Annemieke van den Dool, Duke Kunshan University

The panels were thoughtfully organized to maximize discussion in ways that engaged multiple approaches to and insights about related topics. For instance, one panel incorporated theoretical and philosophical explanations underlying green transitions with respect to degrowth and the commons, a case study derived from “desk research” when it was not possible to visit the site directly, and first-hand fieldwork that drew on a combination of empirical data and direct observation.

Active, interdisciplinary engagement

The papers presented were all unpublished works in progress, and the feedback from panel attendees was constructive. Questions were asked and answered during a lively Q&A period in each panel; moderators diligently fulfilled the Herculean task of keeping everyone on time. The interdisciplinary nature of this workshop provided valuable perspectives beyond each speaker’s core academic field, enabling them to expand the audience to which their research can speak.

AI is the product of all of us, and so, we have the right to use it. Open access is one of the crucial factors to make degrowth possible.”

—Suh-Hyun Park, Jeju National University

Specific queries about details raised by speakers combined with larger-scale philosophical questions about “green transitions,” namely: who are they for—people, countries, or something bigger, such as nature and the planet itself; and, if the transition is exclusively for people, can we reasonably call it “green”?

Currently, oversight is mainly done by states. Academics can see the issues with this, but these problems will look different to different actors, so how do you see the question of oversight in relation to your particular cases?”

—Jay Ke Schutte, Zhejiang University

Nicole Barnes, a professor of history and director of APSI at Duke, observed how the EFAN conference plays a key role in strengthening the network of environmental scholars across Asia and beyond, extending Duke’s climate influence throughout the region.

Echoing this view, Jingbo Cui, co-director of the ERC at DKU, emphasizes that the conference not only reinforces DKU’s dedication to climate sustainability but also showcases the depth and scope of its environmental research in China and the wider international context.

Networking beyond panels

During the conference, DKU undergraduate student volunteers Xinyao (Tacia) Gao (2028) and Zaozao Wang (2028) organized two campus tours showcasing DKU’s recent sustainability initiatives, including the LEED-certified buildings, the water recycling systems, the central lake ecosystem, the green wall, the community garden, and an exhibition of the award-winning bird-protection project curated by Professor Binbin Li.

It’s not plastic we’re demonizing, it’s disposability. Even then, we have to be careful, because disposability can also save lives, not just harm.”

—Adam Liebman, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Between sessions, panelists actively engaged one another in dialogue about their current research and future directions. Since speakers and attendees ranged in age and experience from undergraduate students to tenured faculty and everything in between, intergenerational as well as contemporary connections were forged. Scholars found new links to peers, seniors, and juniors working in related areas, and several have made plans to conduct field research together and to collaborate on a grant application for a future workshop focused on environmental transitions that will be the basis of further exchanges.

A food forest is not simply a pre-existing model.”

—Yueke Li, University of Otago

The interdisciplinary nature of EFAN was particularly suited to the presenters, many of whom had begun their academic careers in one field before following the call to take their work in an entirely new direction. This was reflected in their work which draws on the tools of multiple social science disciplines, including empirical data analysis as well as direct interviews and participant observation.

The just transition framework is about everyday inequality.”

—Xue Ma, UC Irvine

One participant studied finance as an undergraduate student before choosing anthropology for their graduate studies; they use the full range of their training and experience to look at how economies are constituted, challenging presumptions of what an economy is, and examining finance itself as a temporal mechanism, recognizing that even seemingly objective data that uses the present value to estimate future value is fundamentally affected by complex social factors.

Future Directions

The 2026 EFAN Kunshan workshop reunited scholars who have been part of the network since its inception and first meeting in summer 2024 as well as those for whom this was their first engagement with the growing network. The organizers look forward to seeing how all network members will use their experiences to strengthen their individual academic work and to identify opportunities for mentorship, professional growth, interinstitutional speaking engagements, and future collaborative research.

Thank you for being here with us and thinking together.”

—Professor Nicole Elizabeth Barnes, Duke University

We anticipate engaging with returnees as well as new scholars in the next iteration of EFAN, currently being planned for summer 2027 at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Moments (slideshow)

This year’s workshop theme is “Green Transitions,” exploring how green transitions are designed, implemented, and envisioned across Asia’s varied landscapes. Asia is a critical site for studying energy transitions due to its rapidly evolving political economies, diverse ecologies, and long histories of resource extraction.

The workshop will be conducted in-person to facilitate EFAN’s goals of strengthening networks, enhancing interpersonal connections, and promoting relationship-building among all participants.

We are requesting proposals of unpublished research from academics and practitioners in the humanities and social sciences whose work can help illuminate pathways to low-carbon, equitable futures in Asia.

Possible panel or paper topics include (but are not limited to):

• Tracing the history of green development and technology
• Analyzing green transitions and emerging environmental commons
• Interrogating green capitalism and greenwashing
• Moving beyond carbon capitalism
• Reflecting on issues of energy justice
• Tracking the politics of air, atmosphere, and breathability
• Understanding hydrospheric and oceanic transformations in green transitions
• Considering gender, race, class, and disability within green transitions
• Building post-carbon cities and infrastructures
• Recognizing carbon-corporeal entanglements (e.g., embodied experiences of extraction, toxicity, and exposure)
• Imagining fossil-fuel-free futures
• Engaging communities influenced by green transitions
• Explaining methodological approaches to studying energy transitions (ethnographic, archival, STS, participatory, or artistic methods)
• Supporting artistic, activist, and practice-based engagements with green transitions
• Attending to the ecological and material footprint of digital infrastructures such as AI
• Exploring deep earth ecologies and the politics of rare earth

Submission Guidelines:

1. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and should explain the research project and its contribution to facilitating our understanding of “green transitions” in the Asian context.
2. The priority application deadline is January 1, 2026; abstracts received by January 12 2026 will be considered on a rolling basis.
3. Upload your file(s) in .pdf (preferred) or .doc/.docx format; make sure to include your name in the file name.

Selected participants will be notified in late January. Questions about the process or any technical issues can be directed to Ms. Renate Kwon at APSI.

Please note: limited funding is available to support invited presenters’ travel to and stay in Kunshan.

Download a copy of the CfP
(US letter format):

Download a copy of the CfP
(A4 format):

Be sure to also read about our 2024 workshop in Jeju and 2025 workshop in Durham. We look forward to receiving your proposals!

by Jieun Cho, postdoctoral associate

The second meeting of the Environmental Futures in Asia Network (EFAN) took place on May 15–16, 2025, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Building on the success of the inaugural workshop held in Jeju, South Korea, in 2024, this year’s symposium furthered EFAN’s threefold mission: supporting emerging scholars in advancing their research agendas; facilitating interdisciplinary conversations on methods and theories related to environmental challenges in Asia; and cultivating collaboration by connecting scholars to one another as well as community stakeholders and practitioners.

Presenters represented a wide range of academic disciplines, including environmental science, political science, history, anthropology, geography, and literature. Anchored in Duke’s institutional commitment to environmental and climate justice, the 2025 EFAN workshop emphasized pedagogy—broadly defined to include teaching, advising, action-oriented learning, and community engagement—as a critical means for engaging Asia’s role in global environmental futures.

Keynote Address

The workshop opened with a keynote lecture by Kim Fortun (UC Irvine) titled “EcoEd: Teaching to Attest.” Drawing on decades of ethnographic engagement with environmental disasters and science studies, Fortun outlined a pedagogical framework shaped by the conditions of “late industrialism,” an era defined by infrastructural breakdowns, cascading risks, and epistemologies of denial.

Reflecting on her own experience growing up in petrochemical landscapes in the United States, she explained she had learned an “art of not seeing”—a socially and structurally embedded way of ignoring environmental harm and its potential. This, she added, is central to late industrial logic—an epistemological condition sedimented into landscapes through “tightly coupled” social, political, and environmental systems.

Fortun emphasized that a late-industrial pedagogy must not merely give voice, but instead build capacities—providing students, scholars, and communities with tools to name what is happening, trace relations, and intervene in impactful ways. Drawing on her work with schools, advocacy networks, and expert communities, she described how she began teaching students to design sustainability projects, role-play stakeholders, and engage in case studies.

By interpreting, discussing, and creating knowledge through various modes of action, students learn that knowledge translation requires different skill sets from knowledge engineering. They discover how they can play a critical role in building collective capacities to work through complex problems.

In the final portion of her talk, Fortun turned to the importance of “knowledge infrastructures”: collaboratively built platforms, archives, case studies, and analytic tools that allow communities to navigate slow-moving crises that may span regions as well as generations. She introduced her work with PECE (Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography) and projects like the Environmental Injustice Global Record. These infrastructures can also expand our capacity to examine “data divergence,” tracing how the same sets of data can be interpreted and used differently over time, depending on the dynamics of the communities that mobilize them in their own context.

Fortun’s keynote address framed environmental pedagogy not only as one-way transmission of knowledge, but as a collaborative process of “scaffolding” pathways for “just transitions.” Pedagogy in this sense is not just how we teach about the world, but how we find ways to expand and pass down what we study and lay the groundwork to know and transform the world in more accountable ways.

Thematic Panels and Pedagogical Experimentation

Four thematic panels spread across the two days of the workshop explored how pedagogy can serve as both method and medium for environmental inquiry in and beyond Asia. Each panel highlighted approaches to teaching environmental justice, multispecies entanglements, climate governance, and environmental care work.

These sessions foregrounded not only the content of environmental learning, but also the forms it might take, from field immersion to archival inquiry, stakeholder role-play, dialogues with AI, and artwork.

Panel 1: Reimagining Environmental Pedagogies

The opening panel, “Reimagining Environmental Pedagogies,” explored critical, historical, and affective approaches to environmental pedagogy.

Margherita Long discussed the idea of teaching “degrowth” by putting it in conversation with literature that emerged from the aftermath of detrimental pollution, such as Michiko Ishimure’s listening-writing on Minamata. Such juxtaposition can be useful in encouraging students to consider how “nature” can be related not only a force or threat, but as having different communities, histories, and possibilities.

Victoria Lee walked attendees through her pedagogical practices for her (mostly) engineering students, in which she introduces historical knowledge as a way to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions in engineering practice and to answer big questions that don’t seem to have “right” answers—with concrete examples of industrial waste, HIV virus, and microbes.

Ting Hui Lau introduced what she calls “scyborg pedagogy” as a way to counter ecological fatalism in the contexts of techno-authoritarian education, emotional detachment, and learned helplessness, offering affective rewiring in learning experience as a pedagogical necessity to nurture a sense of connection, agency, and futurity.

Panel 2: Rising Scholars in Asian Environments

The second panel, “Rising Scholars in Asian Environments,” brought together early-career scholars at Duke who are experimenting with religious, aesthetic, and legal frameworks to study environmental complexity. The panelists and discussant highlighted how cultural forms—literary, religious, ecological, and juridical—serve as critical frameworks for understanding the layered complexities and contradictions that shape environmental governance in contemporary Asia.

Based on her coursework on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s archive at Duke, Yixuan Jiang discussed how Sedgwick’s attention to Buddhism and its queer and environmental potential had been woke through “encounter” with cancer, as a wake-up call to inhabit life differently.

Yangfan Li asked if literary, technological, and media practices may change how we “sense” islands in ways to cultivate deterritorializing modes of attunement both ecologically and socially.

Anqi Zheng argued that Fengshui beliefs continue to shape environmental discourse in China today, based on her study of how the unearthing of an ancient stone rhino sculpture in Chengdu prompted speculative rumors and public protests that linked the disturbance to recent urban flooding.

Yu-An Kuo examined how the ambiguous legal status of swiftlet farming in Malaysia is reshaping the relationships between small-scale, ethnically diverse farmers, bureaucratic regulations, and precarious livelihoods.

Panel 3: Pedagogical Collaborations

The third panel, “Pedagogical Collaborations,” focused on community-based pedagogies linking food, land, and climate justice.

Ja-Kyung Kim and Suh-Hyun Park presented on the Hansalim Jeju Cooperative’s efforts to create food commons rooted in local needs, demonstrating how care-based infrastructures—such as publicly accessible common refrigerators—can redefine food as a relational, ecological, and political issue. These initiatives are local responses to the issue of food insecurity in Jeju and, more broadly, are motivated by a long-term critique of Seoul-centered policy frameworks and infrastructures—which have been showing signs of breakdown.

Christian Lentz and Terese Gagnon shared their fieldwork and field trips involving a community garden in North Carolina as a site of multispecies, migrant, and refugee relationality, showing how “garden” generates more than food; they create pedagogical encounters with contested belonging, ontological precarity, and environmental justice.

Wumeng He shared his experience piloting a climate change course that actively incorporated AI with aims to personalize environmental learnings. His students were asked to “dialogue with AI” to simulate stakeholder negotiations, to explore multiple trajectories to come up with an answer to complex issues, and to learn the significance of linguistic expression in framing policy debates.

Brendan Galipeau emphasized systems-thinking across climate, energy, food, and waste—what he calls the “three Es”: environment, equity, and ecology—as a framework resonant with Indigenous cosmologies. Drawing on his research among Tibetan communities in Southwestern China and the Atayal people in Taiwan, he teaches how indigenous worldviews interpret climate change not as a purely environmental disruption, but as a response to social and spiritual failures—which may offer a foundation for environmental ethics that challenges climate colonialism.

Panel 4: Environmental Governance

The final panel, “Environmental Governance,” addressed how legal frameworks, data practices, and citizen science shape environmental education and advocacy.

Juliette Duara discussed how Earth jurisprudence can be taught through legal case studies such as the Tuhoe community’s hut-building project in New Zealand, raising critical questions about who can speak for nature in legal procedures. Her presentation highlighted how, even within tight-knit communities, representing the rights of nature poses complex challenges that demand pedagogical imagination—which can also benefit from postcolonial perspectives in considering the status of non-humans.

Sofyan Ansori presented his collaborative research on fire governance in Indonesia, showcasing how “fire play”—his fieldwork-based collaboration using exhibitions, comics, and film-making—disrupts the dominant flame/blame/shame narrative on indigenous fire practices.

Jimmy Choi presented an undergraduate teaching agenda which presents shorebirds as key interlocutors in biodiversity and conservation concerns. Binbin Li also introduced a citizen science initiative on bird collisions in urban landscapes in China, which mobilized over 5,000 volunteers to monitor and mitigate threats caused by glass buildings and LED lights. Integrating fieldwork, simulations, and low-cost design solutions into the DKU undergraduate curriculum, they underscored how cultivating ecological awareness through data, design, and observation can transform students into active participants in multispecies care and environmental governance.

Building connections beyond the lecture hall

At the end of the first day, participants gathered on the rooftop garden of Grainger Hall to continue discussions initiated by the opening keynote address and first two panel presentations.

Expanding the conversation, Madison Chudzik, a PhD student in biology at Duke University, gave an informal presentation about her novel project that captures birds’ nocturnal flight calls, a key part of a larger research goal to understand the impacts of climate change and light pollution on avian migration.

Field-Based Learning and Community Engagement

Continuing EFAN’s commitment to integrating place-based learning, participants joined two field excursions during the second day of workshop. In the morning, Alex Nickley led members of the group on a birding excursion at the nearby Duke Pond to learn about the substantial biodiversity that surrounds us, hidden in plain sight.

An hour’s stroll revealed 14 species of bird, including some stellar neotropical migrants such as the Great-crested Flycatcher and Red-eyed Vireo. As Nickley noted, these birds travel hundreds of miles from Central and South America, reminding us how environmental connections transcend national boundaries.  

In the afternoon, group experienced a small piece of Asia in North Carolina with a visit to Transplanting Traditions, a community farm in Orange County, that networks, supports, and teaches refugee and small-scale farmers from Southeast Asia to build food sovereignty through culturally resonant and sustainable agricultural practices. All of the farmers are originally from Burma (Myanmar), though some were born in refugee camps in Thailand and other countries before settling in North Carolina.

The farm began as a community garden project, gradually expanding into a larger project that incorporates community building as well as enhancing economic stability for the farmers. Participants on the tour spoke with organization leaders about their collaborations with community members, their use of high tunnels and test plots, and how programs for children were developed as a direct response to a need for cultural touchstones.

These two site visits grounded the workshop in local environmental work, while providing comparative points of reflection on cross-cultural migration, agricultural labor, and multispecies care.

Collaborative Ethos

Throughout the workshop, a strong ethos of collaboration and mutual learning animated the discussions. Presenters and participants alike emphasized the need for pedagogical approaches that move beyond extractive models of environmental knowledge and toward shared forms of capacity-building.

Emerging scholars engaged with senior researchers in generative ways during sessions and between meals, and multiple participants reflected on how the workshop inspired them to reimagine their teaching and advising practices.

Future Directions

EFAN’s 2025 iteration successfully deepened the network’s intellectual and institutional foundations, showcasing how Asia-focused environmental research can serve as an interdisciplinary platform for rethinking pedagogy, justice, and collaboration. To support future development, participants also formed a steering committee to guide programming, coordinate collaborative outputs, and strengthen institutional partnerships.

Looking ahead, the network plans to develop collective teaching materials, explore modes of co-publication, and expand partnerships with community organizations and academic institutions across Asia and the US. In doing so, EFAN aims to contribute meaningfully to Duke’s Climate Commitment and to the broader project of reimagining environmental futures through socially engaged scholarship.

Moments (slideshow)

Our workshop theme this year is PEDAGOGY—broadly defined as how we might teach, learn, and collaborate, in and beyond classrooms and communities, while highlighting the substantive ways Asia contributes to addressing environmental futures globally. 

This two-day workshop will feature a keynote address, thematically organized panels, and a local field excursion. About fifteen faculty and early- mid-career scholars who work on Monsoon Asia (East, Southeast, and South Asia) will share their insights on pedagogic teaching, research, and mentoring. The presenters will be invited from and outside Duke and their expertise will span fields of geography, literature, history, anthropology, political science, and environmental studies.

We are looking to form one panel by student-researchers whose projects focus on environmental issues in Monsoon Asia. Topics of inquiry are widely open. We provide two options for presentation format: a 15-minute research presentation and a poster presentation (in any format that can be exhibited in the venue). Presenters will benefit from a discussant’s feedback to further develop their work as well as an opportunity to learn about interdisciplinary methods by directly networking with about fifteen cutting-edge teacher-scholars in their fields of interest (comparative literature, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, environmental studies).

Selected presenters will be fully integrated into the workshop schedule, including participation in panel discussions, meals and receptions, a speaker’s event on environmental justice by a local activists’ group in NC and a field excursion to a farm-outreach program in Orange County.

If you are interested, email your proposal to Jieun Cho by February 23, 2025:

Submission Guidelines

1. Subject line: “EFAN 2025 – Student CFP: [Your Name]”
2. Indicate whether you plan to present orally (15-minute slot) or via poster.
3. Provide your name, affiliation, a title and a preliminary abstract (about 250 words) of the proposed presentation.

Selected participants will be notified in February with final details. We will also give you some time to refine your preliminary abstracts in line with the final program in March—so don’t hesitate to submit your ideas!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Jieun Cho.

Be sure to read about EFAN’s 2024 workshop. The Durham workshop will be our first event to include student research and we look forward to receiving your proposals!

The second meeting of the APSI Environmental Futures in Asia Network (EFAN) will take place May 15–17, 2025, hosted by Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

The insights gained and relationships formed at the inaugural 2024 workshop in Jeju will serve as the foundation for this second event which aims to broaden participants’ understanding and awareness of efforts to promote social and environmental justice.

This workshop will invite additional contributors representing Duke’s vibrant academic communities as well as other institutions in North America and Asia, advancing interdisciplinary and cross-regional collaboration by promoting emerging social science and humanities research on environmental issues. Additionally, graduate students will be invited to share their research and engage with more established faculty, expanding the conversation to include multiple generations.

EFAN was established with three objectives: supporting emerging scholars in advancing their research agendas, facilitating interdisciplinary conversations on methods and theories related to environmental topics in Asia, and cultivating ethical collaboration by connecting scholars with local practitioners, researchers, and activists.

by Jieun Cho, postdoctoral associate

The inaugural meeting of the APSI Environmental Futures in Asia Network (EFAN) was held on July 4-6, 2024, on Jeju Island, South Korea. EFAN was established with three objectives: supporting emerging scholars in advancing their research agendas, facilitating interdisciplinary conversations on methods and theories related to environmental topics in Asia, and cultivating ethical collaboration by connecting scholars with local practitioners, researchers, and activists.

Cosponsored and coorganized by Duke’s Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI) and Jeju National University’s (JNU) Research Center on the Commons and Sustainable Society, the workshop marked a significant step toward achieving these ambitious goals.

Thematic Panel Discussions

Thematic panel discussions were a central component of the workshop. Scholars from diverse disciplines—including history, anthropology, political science, sociology, public policy, philosophy, law, and science and technology studies—shared presentations highlighting their work on environmental topics and engaged in rich, cross-disciplinary dialogues.

Faculty and scholars from JNU’s Research Center on the Commons presented their findings from community-oriented projects documenting Jeju Island’s transition to an Eco-City. They explored plans for widespread adoption of electric cars by 2040, civic resistance to developmental projects like the construction of a second airport, and the impact of the transition to renewable energy production from wind farms on local livelihoods and the relationships between villages.

Scholars reflected on shared concerns such as land tenure and privatization, sustainable management of livelihoods, and incorporating customary practices for promoting an equitable governance structure. The discussions highlighted the intersection of landscape transformation, global financial investment, and citizenship and customs in communal practices.

Overall, JNU’s research contributions underscored the critical role of interdisciplinary approaches to address complex environmental transitions.

Duke Kunshan University (DKU) scholars showcased their ongoing and emerging projects, including community-focused forest conservation efforts that promote ecological and economic balance by collaborating with local people who keep livestock in conserved forests, an examination of cultural values in preserving lakes by tracing how intergenerational family histories contribute to civic conservation efforts, and the effects of climate change on migratory birds that travel between Korea and China, highlighting the need for transnational strategies to sustain biodiversity.

These presentations illustrated the DKU scholars’ commitment to integrating local ecological knowledge with broader adaptation strategies. The comprehensive nature of their research demonstrated the importance of localized studies for informing multinational and global environmental strategies.

Duke scholars provided valuable perspectives on how environmental and social issues manifest across various environmental and social issues. They presented on: Vietnam’s Provincial Green Index, which incentivizes local provinces to adopt environmentally friendly policies by implementing and tracking metrics for evaluation and improvement; the conceptual implications of subterranean property in colonial India for fossil fuel dependency; an overview of how a commons framework can be applied to understand institutions governing the management of shared resources at local as well as global levels; the legal potential of the Rights of Nature approach in global regulations targeting resource destruction; new forms of risks and uncertainties that are brought by large-scale water projects on local communities and cosmologies on the Mekong River; and new governmental and social practices emerging around ethical considerations over stray pets and animal euthanasia rates in Japan.

Duke’s diverse and in-depth presentations highlighted the need to understand historical, legal, political, and social dimensions when examining environmental issues in Asia.

Organized under four thematic areas (ecology, commons, biodiversity, and energy/climate crisis), the panels enabled all workshop participants to identify how similar inquires are emerging across different parts of Asia. The collaborative spirit of the workshop fostered a deeper understanding of environmental challenges across Asia as well as the innovative methods and intellectual approaches scholars can use to study these timely issues.

Local Field Excursions

On the final day of the workshop, participants visited two significant sites: the coastal village of Pyeongdae-ri and the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park. The visits were realized through the long-standing partnership between JNU’s research networks and local villages.

The excursions, a particularly innovative approach of this workshop, offered an invaluable opportunity to explore environmental topics of shared interest from a fresh, region-specific perspective while promoting new connections among emerging and senior scholars. Guided by a local village administrative chief-resident with deep roots in the community, participants literally traveled beyond their specific research expertise and gained insights into the unique environmental and cultural context of Jeju.

Walking through Pyeongdae-ri, the group learned how the village’s systems of citizenship, revenue generation, kinship practices, and resource management have been shaped by diverse historical forces, including colonial occupation, civil wars, and, more recently, the escalating impacts of climate change.

The dramatic rise in ocean temperatures at an unprecedented rate (by two Celsius degrees over a decade) has rendered traditional diving livelihoods impossible as the sea fields succumb to ocean desertification and biospheric tropicalization.

Conversations during the trip covered a wide range of topics, including construction and maintenance of the island’s famous stone walls, Japanese colonial rule, brown algae, traditional women divers (haenyeo, recognized as UNESCO heritage), anchovies living in puddles, wind farms, Jeju diaspora communities in Japan, and place-names.

The excursion highlighted how historical and environmental changes are intertwined with Jeju’s distinctive volcanic geology and its deep geopolitical and ecological history, which are vividly remembered by and profoundly affect the island residents.

Additional revelations happened at Jeju’s 4.3 Peace Park which introduced the group to local witnesses’ oral histories and reflections. The museum gave new insight into the island’s landscape formation, shaped by transnational migration, political oppression, and financial globalization. Although not directly related to the environmental topics of the panels, the visit deepened participants’ appreciation of the complex socio-political factors influencing Jeju’s environmental history and relevant decision-making processes and opened new avenues of inquiry. Overall, the field trips underscored the importance of local knowledge and historical context for environmental research, exemplifying the workshop’s commitment to ethical collaboration by connecting scholars with local practitioners, researchers, and activists.

Relationship-Building and Agenda Setting

The workshop built new relationships between scholars representing a broad array of academic disciplines who share a common interest in environmental and climate-related inquiries in Asia. An agenda-setting conversation generated ideas for future collaboration, including developing a curated set of interdisciplinary case studies and encouraging inter-referencing within Asian communities. EFAN aims to support equitable knowledge generation by improving communication across disciplinary boundaries and helping scholars use their research to address the stakes and concerns of local communities facing global environmental changes.

Conclusion

The EFAN Jeju workshop offered a robust program that supported emerging scholars, facilitated interdisciplinary conversations, and cultivated ethical collaboration. The thematic panel discussions, local excursions, and relationship-building efforts demonstrated the immense value of engaging with local practitioners, researchers, and activists. This inaugural meeting was a resounding success, laying a strong foundation for future iterations.

Looking ahead to the second iteration planned for DKU in late spring 2025, we aim to build on this success, advancing environmental research and collaboration in Asia. The insights gained and relationships formed will contribute to promoting social and environmental justice, and, drawing on Duke’s vibrant scholarly communities, significantly bolster Duke’s Climate Commitment. Through these efforts, the network is poised to take significant strides in interdisciplinary and cross-regional collaboration by promoting social science and humanities research on environmental issues.

Moments (slideshow)