About the Asian Institute

The text reads ASIAN INSTITUTE in red, surrounded by circles and semi-circles in black and grey with textile patterns. One purple circle and two red semi-circles offset the monochromatic colour scheme. At the bottom, the Asian Institute logo, with the Munk School of Global Affairs and University of Toronto names and crest appear.

The Asian Institute is one of the world's leading centres of research excellence in Asian Studies. With over one hundred affiliated scholars working across the humanities and social sciences, the Asian Institute convenes and leads cross-regional, interdisciplinary research on Asia.

Our faculty and students offer meaningful insights into a wide range of crucial issues at stake in this dynamic region of the globe. Asia's breakneck urbanization processes, social media and communications revolutions, and growing environmental crises all offer new challenges and demand creative interventions. Meanwhile, the creation of local literary, visual, and archeological sites as fields of a contested colonial and postcolonial past provide rich pathways to greater understanding of the region's complexity. 

The location of the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto, a premier university in a city with deep historical and vibrant contemporary ties to Asia, gives the Institute a rich academic and geographical anchor for research on Asia.