On 27 and 28 October 2023, East Asia Disability Studies Forum met in Seoul, South Korea after 4 years in-person. The overall theme was “Universal Access in Information Society (CRPD article 9 on Accessibility) – Persons with Disabilities and Revolution of Information Accessibility”. The Seoul Forum was hosted by the Korean Society for Disability Studies, and co-organized by Institute of Ars Vivendi, Japan Society for Disability Studies, Taiwan Association for Disability Studies, and Wuhan East Lake Institute for Social Advancement.
Please visit http://www.arsvi.com/a/20231027-28.htm for the programme and presentations.
The last in-person Forum was in Wuhan, China, in October 2019. After Wuhan, the Institute of Ars Vivendi was to host the Forum in Kyoto in 2020 but the COVID-19 pandemic prevented it. The Institute hosted three meetings in 2020, 2021, and 2022, all on-line, and finally it was the turn of the Korean Society for Disability Studies (KSDS) to host it this year.
The opening ceremony included the emotional screening of the memorial video of Prof. Tateiwa Shinya, prepared by Prof. Jung Hee-Kyung, chair of the international committee of the KSDS.
An essay covering the Seoul Forum, entitled, “Tateiwa Shinya, Jung-Hee Kyung, and East Asia Disability Studies Forum”(in Japanese) written by Nagase Osamu, Senior Researcher at our Institute, has been uploaded at the web site of Japan Society for Disability Studies.
At the end of the Forum in Seoul, Prof. Chou Yi-Chun, President of Taiwan Association of Disability Studies announced that the next Forum would meet in Taiwan on 25 and 26 October 2024. The theme is “CRPD after and beyond: Interpretation, Implementation, and Implication of the Convention”.
During the Forum in Seoul, a new book entitled “Disability, Sexuality, and Gender in Asia: Intersectionality, Human Rights, and the Law”, edited by Wanhong Zhang, Elisabeth Bjørnstøl, Peng Ding, Wei Gao, Hanxu Liu, and Yijun Liu, was launched. The Institute of Ars Vivendi hosted the Conference on Disability, SOGIE and Equality in Asia, in 2018 in Kyoto, which provided one of the stepping stones for the completion of this book.