About AsiaRes

Baltic Research Centre for East Asian Studies (AsiaRes – Baltijas Austrumāzijas pētniecības centrs)

Introduction

Welcome to AsiaRes! We are located in Riga, the largest metropole in the Baltic region. This part of northeastern Europe is a pivotal historical point in transfers between the East and West. For centuries, this has been a place where the leading economical and political powers of the European world — the German order and the Polish, Swedish and Russian empires succeeded to establish the Baltic Sea as an important cultural and merchantile centre. Language borders have always been more fluent here than elsewhere, as the majority of the local population (Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Russian, Hebrew and, formerly, Livonian, Polish and German) is accustomed to speaking foreign languages and simultanously keeping their native tongues alive. Though some groups have vanished and others increased, cultural coexistence is a constant theme in Baltic history.

Coexistence in the contemporary world has become a mode for self-understanding as cultural, social, economic and political horizons broaden. Once, terms like “East Asia” and “Far East” were dusky notions in the minds of most Europeans. Now, this has changed, as have our conceptions of the world and ourselves. For Europeans, as for East Asians, coexistence has become a fact of everyday life. However, questions also arise more frequently than answers can be found. AsiaRes is a public and academic facility to instigate exchange between East Asia and the Baltics and promoting learning!

Supporters

AsiaRes is jointly supported by the University of Latvia, the National Library of Latvia and, from its initial stage until 2013, Taiwan’s Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. The centre presently maintains the most comprehensive public research library for Chinese and Taiwanese studies in the Baltic states (about 3,000 volumes in European languages and Chinese) and continously enlarges its stock. In cooperation with academic partner institutions in East Asia, we aim to round out our stock by adding resources on Japanese, Korean and Tibetan studies — up to 8,000 volumes — until the end of 2012. After the opening of the new building of the National Library of Latvia, the AsiaRes research library will move from its present location in the Faculty of Humanities to one of Riga’s most prominent new sites.

Academic Programme

A program of academic and public events is offered throughout the year. In addition to the growing electronic collections of research studies and study materials that will be provided on this webpage, the centre, in cooperation with an international board of editors, will issue the publication series “Euro-sinica” (Peter Lang International Publisher, Bern). Though the centre perceives its mission as essentially academic and research-oriented, we pursue a commitment to the general public. We believe that academic life is part of public life and will set meaningful agendas and enlighten general media discourse. Our programme neither focuses exclusively on populistic highlights nor invites only specialists to join its events. What qualifies is the human will and capacity to learn as the one and only answer to the challenges of a new, emerging Eurasian space.