IAFOR > The Asian Conference on the Social Sciences (ACSS) > ACSS2024 > Speakers

Speakers

The Asian Conference on the Social Sciences (ACSS) is a multidisciplinary conference held concurrently with The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities (ACAH). Keynote, Featured and Spotlight Speakers will provide a variety of perspectives from different academic and professional backgrounds. Registration for either conference will allow participants to attend sessions in both.

This page provides information about presenters. For details of presentations and other programming, please visit the Programme page.

Jun Arima

University of Tokyo, Japan
William Baber

Kyoto University Graduate School of Management, Japan
Joseph Coleman

Indiana University, United States
Alfonso J. García-Osuna

Hofstra University, United States
Anshuman Khare

Athabasca University, Canada
Kanji Kitamura

Loyola University, United States and Hawaii Pacific University, United States
Yuko Onozawa

University of Stavanger, Norway

Become a Speaker

Excellent plenary speakers are central to our conferences, ensuring that timely, innovative and engaging content is presented to our audiences around the world. If you would like to be considered for a speaking slot at one of our conferences, please apply below.

Apply to Speak

Previous Speakers

View details of speakers at past ACSS conferences via the links below.

ACSS2022	ACSS2021	ACSS2020
ACSS2019	ACSS2018	ACSS2017
ACSS2016	ACSS2015	ACSS2014
ACSS2013	ACSS2012	ACSS2011
ACSS2010

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Jun Arima

University of Tokyo, Japan

Biography

Professor Jun Arima is the President of IAFOR, and the senior academic officer of the organisation. In this role, Professor Arima is the Honorary Chair of the International Academic Advisory Board, as well as both the Academic Governing Board and its Executive Committee. He also sits on the IAFOR Board of Directors.

Jun Arima was formerly Director General of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), UK from 2011 to 2015 and Special Advisor on Global Environmental Affairs for the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan, from 2011 to 2015. He has previously held various international energy/environment-related positions, including: Head of Division, Country Studies, International Energy Agency (IEA); Director, International Affairs Division, Agency of Natural Resources and Energy, METI; and Deputy Director General for Environmental Affairs at METI’s Industrial Science and Technology Policy and Environment Bureau. In the COP (UN Convention on Climate Change) 14, 15 and 16, he was Japanese Chief Negotiator for AWG-KP.

Since 2015 Jun Arima has been a Professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan, where he teaches Energy Security, International Energy Governance, and Environmental Policies in the Graduate School of Public Policy. (GraSPP). He is also currently a Consulting Fellow at the Japanese Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI). He is also Executive Senior Fellow at the 21st Century Public Policy Institute, Principal Researcher at the International Environmental and Economic Institute (IEEI), Distinguished Senior Policy Fellow, at the Asia Pacific Institute of Research (APIR), Senior Policy Fellow on Energy and Environment, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), and was the Lead Author, the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC).

Keynote Presentation (2023) | Inaugural Address from the President of IAFOR, Professor Jun Arima

William Baber

Kyoto University Graduate School of Management, Japan

Biography

William W. Baber has combined education with business throughout his career. His professional experience has included economic development in the State of Maryland, language services in the Washington, DC area, supporting business starters in Japan, and teaching business students in Japan, Europe, and Canada. He taught English in the Economics and Business Administration Departments of Ritsumeikan University (Japan) before joining the Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University where he is Associate Professor in addition to holding courses at the University of Vienna and University of Jyväskylä. His courses include Business Negotiation, Cross Cultural Management, and Management Communication. He is lead author of the 2015 textbook Practical Business Negotiation and conducts research in the areas of negotiation, acculturation, and business models, especially in relation to Japan. He completed his PhD on intercultural adjustment of expatriate workers in Japan in 2016 at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. In 2004 he earned a Masters of Education from the University of Maryland (USA) in Instructional Systems Design.

Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Digital Transformation (DX) in Japanese Business Organisations

Joseph Coleman

Indiana University, United States

Biography

Joseph Coleman is the Roy W. Howard Professor of Practice in Journalism at Indiana University Bloomington's Media School, where he teaches newswriting, immigration reporting and foreign correspondence. Coleman, 59, has reported from some two dozen countries in a 30-year reporting career. He worked for United Press International in Panama City and Bogotá, Colombia in 1988-90, and reported for 18 years for the Associated Press in the United States, France and Japan, where he was Tokyo bureau chief from 2004 until he moved to IU in early 2009. His book, Unfinished Work: The Struggle to Building an Aging American Workforce, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. Coleman is a 2022-23 Fulbright U.S. Scholar based in Japan, where he is researching immigrant communities in Tokyo. He lives in Bloomington with his wife, Kyoko Ichikawa.

Keynote Presentation (2023) | TBA

Alfonso J. García-Osuna

Hofstra University, United States

Biography

Alfonso J. García-Osuna has taught at Hofstra University and at City University of NY-Kingsborough for over 35 years. He specialises in mediaeval and early modern literature, receiving his PhD (1989) from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He has completed postdoctoral work at the University of Valladolid, Spain, has published six books, and is a frequent contributor to specialised journals. Additionally, Dr García-Osuna is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities.

Alfonso received primary and secondary education in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, the place where his family originated and where he grew up. An avid cyclist, he has completed the Road to Santiago, an 867-kilometre route through northern Spain, eight times.

Featured Presentation (2023) | Publishing in the Humanities

Anshuman Khare

Athabasca University, Canada

Biography

Anshuman Khare is Professor in Operations Management at Athabasca University, Canada. He joined Athabasca University in January 2000. He is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and has completed two post-doctoral terms at The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. He is also a former Monbusho Scholar, having completed a postdoctoral assignment at Ryukoku University in Kyoto, Japan. He has published a number of books and research papers on a wide range of topics. His research focuses on environmental regulation impacts on industry, just-in-time manufacturing, supply chain management, sustainability, cities & climate change, and online business education. He is passionate about online business education. Anshuman served as the Editor of the IAFOR Journal of Business and Management, and is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education published by Emerald and is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Applied Management and Technology.

Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Digital Transformation (DX) in Japanese Business Organisations

Kanji Kitamura

Loyola University, United States and Hawaii Pacific University, United States

Biography

Kanji Kitamura is an adjunct faculty member at Hawaii Pacific University and Loyola University Chicago, where he teaches courses on international business and Japanese culture, literature, and language. He is also a PhD candidate at Monash University. With over 20 years of experience in corporate banking, Kanji worked as a bank manager for the former Mitsui Bank in Japan and MUFG Financial Group in the USA. His previous roles involved supervising a team of credit analysts that managed large credit portfolios exceeding $10 billion in assets, consisting of multinational corporations such as Toyota Motor North America, American Honda Motor, Nissan North America, Panasonic, and Sony Entertainment.

Kanji's academic interests revolve around comparative studies of Japan and related areas, including corporate finance within a real-world context, credit analysis primarily of multinational corporations, international business with an emphasis on cross-cultural studies, intercultural communication, and translation studies. He favours qualitative approaches to reveal the unknown, although he has had experience with number-crunching professional duties.

Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Digital Transformation (DX) in Japanese Business Organisations

Yuko Onozawa

University of Stavanger, Norway

Biography

Yuko Onozaka is a Professor of Market Analysis in the Department of Economics and Finance at the UiS Business School, University of Stavanger, Norway. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Davis, and worked at Colorado State University before joining the University of Stavanger in 2008. Her research covers a wide range of topics, including choice modelling, food and sustainability marketing, quantitative textual analysis, machine learning, and family and labour economics. Her work has been published in highly regarded international scholarly journals such as the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Food Policy, and Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. She also holds an adjunct professor position at Doshisha University in Japan from 2021.

Her multinational and multicultural experiences profoundly influenced her current research interests in the intersection of economics, gender, and organisation. Her research, investigating how social gender norms impact the household division of labour in Norway, has been published in Social Forces, and her work on how gender composition influences business committees in Human Relations.

In addition to her academic research, she actively disseminates her unique perspective on gender and Nordic culture to a broader Japanese audience, including popular media outlets such as Newsweek Japan and NewsPicks.

Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Digital Transformation (DX) in Japanese Business Organizations