LEAM 2012
The 8th Lodz East Asia Meeting „East Asia After Global Financial Crisis” took place on June 4-5, 2012. The international academic conference was organised by the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Lodz and held at the Faculty of International and Political Studies. For the first time in its history, the conference was conducted solely in English. The conference lectures focused on specific issues regarding the political and economic situations of East Asian countries after the Global Financial Crisis. The main issues that were focused on included multilateralism and integration in the region, the Japanese political scene, Chinese overseas investments, and the relations between the Middle Kingdom and the European Union and the United States of America. One of the lecture panels was dedicated specifically to the situation in Japan after the earthquake of March 2011, and its political implications.
Representatives of various Polish academic institutions were joined by academics representing, among others, China, Taiwan, Japan, U.S.A, Germany, Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Special guest Ksawery Burski, former ambassador of the Republic of Poland in China, Indonesia, and Singapore, presented the inaugural lecture of the conference. Within the framework of the Lodz East Asia Meetings, on the 5th of June at 12:00 a Polish-Japanese seminar was held dedicated to Japanese politics. In addition to students from the International Relations and Political Science Faculty, Japanese post-graduate and doctoral students (23 in total) from the University of Lodz’s partner university, the University of Kwansei Gakuin, also took part in the seminar. For the guests from Japan this was part of their study trip to Poland. A similar study trip would be undertaken by a group of Polish student who took part in the conference.