Conferences
Where It All Began: Our First 5 Conferences
10 – 12 June 2015, Cardiff University
The inaugural Martial Arts Studies Conference in 2015 brought together a range of academics and PhD students for an interdisciplinary dialogue on a range of formative issues in the embryonic developing field of study. It considered a range of fundamental questions, including: What is martial arts studies? What could it be? Is it a specific new field or is it always going to be a subsection of other disciplines? What are the possibilities and limitations of creating or developing martial arts studies? What are its key concerns, problematics, theories, orientations, and methodologies, and why?
It built on work such as the 2014 special issue of JOMEC Journal on martial arts studies, and invited proposals for 20-minute papers that engage with key questions about the field, as well as papers that present current work in any aspect of martial arts studies.
The conference keynote speakers were: Professor Stephen Chan, OBE (SOAS); Professor Meaghan Morris (Sydney); Professor Douglas Farrer (Guam); Dr Ben Judkins (independent scholar)
19 – 21 July 2016, Cardiff University
The second annual conference provided another opportunity to build on the many working relationships, collaborations and connections of the research network with a further strong programme of contributions to the field. An important element of the conference was the focus on the relations between media representation and embodied practice, although many other areas were the subject of presentations and workshops. A unique element of this conference was a pre-conference competition that invited the submission of a short, five-minute film on any aspect of martial arts.
Keynotes and featured speakers included: Professor Phillip Zarrilli (Exeter); Dr Ben Judkins (Cornell); Professor Adam Frank (Arkansas); Professor Daniel Mroz (Ottawa); Dr Daniel Jaquet (Bern); Professor Janet O’Shea (UCLA); Dr Ben Spatz (Huddersfield)
11 – 13 July 2017, Cardiff University
Both previous Martial Arts Studies Conferences, in 2015 and 2016, brought together over eighty academics, PhD students, scholars and researchers, from a very wide range of fields and from all over the world, for two and a half days of keynotes, special sessions, workshops and socialising. Many new relationships were formed and new collaborations initiated.
These events demonstrated that the future is bright for Martial Arts Studies. The third conference, held in July 2017, built on these strong foundations and brought more martial arts studies scholars and additional disciplinary perspectives together for dialogue and debate.
11 – 12 July 2018, Cardiff University
The inaugural Martial Arts Studies Conference in 2015 brought together a range of academics and PhD students for an interdisciplinary dialogue on a range of formative issues in the embryonic developing field of study. It considered a range of fundamental questions, including: What is martial arts studies? What could it be? Is it a specific new field or is it always going to be a subsection of other disciplines? What are the possibilities and limitations of creating or developing martial arts studies? What are its key concerns, problematics, theories, orientations, and methodologies, and why?
It built on work such as the 2014 special issue of JOMEC Journal on martial arts studies, and invited proposals for 20-minute papers that engage with key questions about the field, as well as papers that present current work in any aspect of martial arts studies.
The conference keynote speakers were: Professor Stephen Chan, OBE (SOAS); Professor Meaghan Morris (Sydney); Professor Douglas Farrer (Guam); Dr Ben Judkins (independent scholar)
23 – 24 May 2019, Chapman University, Orange, California
Our fifth conference focused on the relations between martial arts, culture and politics. Martial arts can be understood in many ways, and the conference aimed to reflect this diversity and plurality of understandings of the term. Similarly, ‘culture’ and ‘politics’ can be understood in a variety of ways. So, the conference was open to works that used any academic approach to the theory and analysis of culture and politics.
The organisers were specifically interested in interrogating the relations between martial arts, the cultural industries, cultural heritage and macro and micro politics, ranging from the ethnic, gender and sexual politics of everyday life all the way to regional, national and international relations and politics.
The conference was a collaboration between Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Department of Political Science, and The Martial Arts Studies Research Network, and hosted by Chapman University, Orange, California. The organisers were Andrea Molle (Chapman University, School of Political Science; founder of Budo-Lab) and Paul Bowman (Cardiff University, UK; founder of The Martial Arts Studies Research Network and co-founder and co-editor of the journal Martial Arts Studies).
