The people who attend ASCJ

Most of the participants in Asian Studies Conference Japan have academic or other affiliations in Japan, North America or Europe. A large majority of them (roughly three quarters) are scholars or other professionals and the rest (roughly one quarter) are graduate students.

Every year about 300 to 400 people attend ASCJ, and most of them preregister online. An analysis of preregistration data shows that participants come from many different countries and regions in the world. Since we ask preregistrants to list an affiliation we have a good idea about the location of their institutional home base but we have no way of knowing their nationality (and no interest in it).

As the first chart below shows, the largest group of participants are based in Japan, the next largest in North America, and the third largest in Europe. People from these three regions account for about 80% of the participants. The rest are spread around the world, mostly from East and Southeast Asia.

A large percentage of our participants are scholars or other professionals with an interest in Asia (they have been categorized as “regular” participants in the second table because they pay the regular fee for the conference). The rest, roughly one quarter, are graduate students. The percentage breakdown of graduate students differs somewhat by location of affiliation, with a comparatively higher percentage of Europe-affiliated participants and a comparatively lower percentage of Japan-affiliated participants being graduate students (the North Americans are in between).

Number of participants by location of affiliation (preregistration data)

Number of participants by type and location of affiliation (2017) (preregistration data)