INDOWS and the Osaka University Center

“Global Area Studies Program” of the National Institutes for the Humanities promotes area studies projects based on four regions that have shaped unique cultures and civilizations: the Global Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean World, Maritime Asia and Pacific, and East Eurasia. The Indian Ocean World Studies (INDOWS) project focuses on the Indian Ocean as well as its adjoining land areas, and aims to elucidate the dynamism of how the mobility and the expansion of people, materials, information, money, culture and faith have contributed to the generation, development, accumulation or extinction of various relations within and outside of this world. Four centers have been established in Japan: the center at the National Museum of Ethnology, at University of Tokyo, at Osaka University and at Kyoto University. Each of which carries out research under its own theme. The Osaka University Center (HINDOWS), which belongs to the Division of Foreign Studies in the Graduate School of Humanities of Osaka University, conducts research activities under the theme of “Hybridity and Creativity in Literature and Ideas” with the aim of elucidating the polycentricity and porosity of the Indian Ocean World from the aspects of literature and ideas.