It is my great honor and pleasure to respond to the invitation of Professor Shigeru Akita, President of AAWH, to write a word of support to our colleagues at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who have taken the responsibility to organize the 5th AAWH Congress in New Delhi on 22-23 October 2022. The New Delhi Congress comes in more line with the other four successful congresses organized by the Asian Association of World Historians (AAWH) after its establishment on May 4, 2008, at Nankai University, Tianjin, China. The first congress was in Osaka (2009) on “World History Studies and World History Education”, the second in Seoul (2012) on Global Exchange Networks of Asia & Alternative Modernities in Asia, the third in Singapore (2015) on Migration in Global History: Peoples, Plants, Plagues, and Ports, and the fourth in Osaka on “Creating World Histories from Asian Perspectives”. This fifth forthcoming congress on “Asia and the Globe: Connecting the Past with the Present” it will serve the primary objective of the Association as “to advance research, teaching, and public discussion on large-scale historical studies in or for the Asia-Pacific region.”

In light of this primary objective of AAWH, I strongly encourage scholars of all disciplines, historians, and graduate students to participate in the fifth congress in New Delhi to submit abstracts that are relevant to its theme that focuses on the connection between the past and the present in a world history context. I am fully confident that the New Delhi congress will give a more balanced picture of the past and present connection between Asia and the globe. In my conclusion, I borrow Professor Shigeru's words and say: “It is a great privilege and honour for us to collaborate with JNU scholars to create ‘World History from Asian Perspectives’ based on their liberal-minded academic traditions in the face of Asia’s current disruptive international order.”

 

Professor Ahmed Ibrahim Abushouk,

Association Dean for Social Sciences and Humanities,

Qatar University

​