IAFOR > The Asian Conference on Ethics, Religion & Philosophy (ACERP) > ACERP2022

ACERP2022

ACERP2022

March 29-31, 2022 | Held online from Tokyo, Japan

Download ACERP2022 Conference Programme

Back to Top

Speakers

  • George D. Chryssides
    George D. Chryssides
    The University of Birmingham, UK
  • Amy Wai Sum Lee
    Amy Wai Sum Lee
    Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong
  • Alistair Ping
    Alistair Ping
    QUT Graduate School of Business, Australia
  • Frank S. Ravitch
    Frank S. Ravitch
    Michigan State University College of Law, United States
  • Roswiyani Roswiyani
    Roswiyani Roswiyani
    Tarumanagara University, Indonesia
  • Monty P. Satiadarma
    Monty P. Satiadarma
    Tarumanagara University, Indonesia
  • Brian Victoria
    Brian Victoria
    Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK

Back to Top

Programme

  • Religion and COVID 19 in the U.S.: The Good, the Bad, and the Shocking
    Religion and COVID 19 in the U.S.: The Good, the Bad, and the Shocking
    Keynote Presentation: Frank S. Ravitch
  • Successful Prophecy? Jehovah’s Witnesses, Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine
    Successful Prophecy? Jehovah’s Witnesses, Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine
    Keynote Presentation: George D. Chryssides
  • The Rehabilitation of a Buddhist Heretic
    The Rehabilitation of a Buddhist Heretic
    Keynote Presentation: Brian Victoria
  • Ethical, Religious and Philosophical Dilemmas in Responding to COVID
    Ethical, Religious and Philosophical Dilemmas in Responding to COVID
    Plenary Panel
  • Responding to COVID: Trauma and Recovery
    Responding to COVID: Trauma and Recovery
    Plenary Panel
  • Building Resilience through Self-care: Art and Aesthetic Wellness
    Building Resilience through Self-care: Art and Aesthetic Wellness
    Featured Presentation: Amy Wai Sum Lee
  • Perceived Stress of Students During Online Learning
    Perceived Stress of Students During Online Learning
    Featured Presentation: Monty P. Satiadarma & Roswiyani Roswiyani

Back to Top

Organising Committee

  • Mimi Bong
    Mimi Bong
    Korea University, South Korea
  • George D. Chryssides
    George D. Chryssides
    The University of Birmingham, UK
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Roberto Ravera
    Roberto Ravera
    ASL1 of Imperia, University of Turin & University of Genoa, Italy
  • Frank S. Ravitch
    Frank S. Ravitch
    Michigan State University College of Law, United States
  • Roswiyani Roswiyani
    Roswiyani Roswiyani
    Tarumanagara University, Indonesia
  • Monty P. Satiadarma
    Monty P. Satiadarma
    Tarumanagara University, Indonesia
  • Dexter Da Silva
    Dexter Da Silva
    Keisen University, Japan
  • Brian Victoria
    Brian Victoria
    Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK

Back to Top

ACERP2022 Review Committee

  • Dr Daniel Dei, North-West University, South Africa
  • Dr Johan Eddebo, Uppsala University, Sweden
  • Dr Maisarah Hasbullah, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Malaysia
  • Professor Craig Mark, Kyoritsu Women's University, Japan
  • Dr Rajesh Kumar Srivastava, MAN Government Degree College JK, Gorakhpur, UP, India
  • Dr Revenendo Vargas, University of Santo Tomas, Philippines

Back to Top

IAFOR Research Centre (IRC) – “Innovation and Value Initiative”

The IAFOR Research Centre (IRC) is housed within Osaka University’s School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), and in June 2018 the IRC began an ambitious new “Innovation and Value Initiative”. Officially launched at the United Nations in a special UN-IAFOR Collaborative Session, the initiative seeks to bring together the best in interdisciplinary research around the concept of value, on how value can be recognised, and measured, and how this can help us address issues and solve problems, from the local to the global.

Learn more about the Innovation and Value Initiative

Back to Top

George D. Chryssides
The University of Birmingham, UK

Biography

Dr George D. Chryssides is Honorary Research Fellow in Contemporary Religion at the University of Birmingham, after being Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, from 2001 to 2008. George Chryssides obtained a First Class Honours MA degree in philosophy at the University of Glasgow, and a First Class Honours Bachelor of Divinity in systematic theology. He subsequently undertook postgraduate research at the University of Oxford, obtaining his doctorate in 1974.

From the 1980s, George Chryssides’ main interest has been new religious movements, on which he has authored numerous books and scholarly articles. Recent publications include Historical Dictionary of Jehovah’s Witnesses (2008), Heaven’s Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture in a Suicide Group (2011), Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements (2012), The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements (co-edited with Benjamin E. Zeller,2014), and Jehovah’s Witnesses: Continuity and Change (2016). He is a regular presenter at national and international conferences.

Keynote Presentation (2022) | Successful Prophecy? Jehovah’s Witnesses, Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine
Amy Wai Sum Lee
Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong

Biography

Amy Lee has a background in comparative literary studies and Buddhist studies, and has published in a range of topics including feminine autobiographies, witchcraft and witchery, experiences of solitude, teenage literature of magic, marginalized experiences by female writers, and popular film and fiction. She has also written about the importance of co-curricular activities in higher education and how they play a role in creating whole person education for young people. In her teaching, she has experimented with approaches of caring pedagogy, and used literary and cultural texts to facilitate emotional wellness on top of subject knowledge. Recent research projects include using Playback Theatre to cultivate self-understanding, self-care, and building connections among diverse groups of participants. She has been an associate professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. She is now Dean and Professor of School of Education and Languages at Hong Kong Metropolitan University.

Featured Presentation (2022) | Building Resilience through Self-care: Art and Aesthetic Wellness
Alistair Ping
QUT Graduate School of Business, Australia

Biography

Alistair Ping is an Adjunct Professor at QUT Graduate School of Business and is also a Colin Brain Governance Fellow. He is a recognised expert in Ethics and Governance having over 25 years experience in the field. Alistair regularly presents at conferences, including the 2019 Australian Public Sector Anti-Corruption Conference and the 2016 ACERP Conference. He has also worked directly with corporations, not for profit and government agencies in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Africa – including the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum.

Alistair is also an Australian-American Fulbright Scholar – his study considered Corporate Social Responsibility trends in the United States and the report ‘Engage’ was submitted to the Australian Senate Inquiry into Corporate Social Responsibility in Australia. Following on from this study Alistair completed a PhD at QUT in Applied Ethics which investigated ‘Why Good People Do Bad Things’ – a key result of this interdisciplinary research was the development of a causal factor model which considers behavioural and contextual cues that can lead to unethical outcomes. Insights from this research were submitted to the Victorian ‘Integrity and Oversight Committee’. Alistair is also the author of two business books on Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility; six personal development books; and numerous magazine and newspaper articles.

Spotlight Presentation

Building a Moral Culture From the Ground Up – Why Fairness, Justice and Reciprocity Are Key

Rationalist models of ethical decision making (Jones, 1991) assume that higher order conscious reasoning dominates the ethical decision-making process and that bad people do bad things due to either greed, bad character or poor values. Interventions following unethical crisis commonly follow on from this assumption and include; new deterrents; efforts to weed out the ‘bad apples’; and retraining in Values. However, research shows that people with ‘a good will’ create bad outcomes in business on a seemingly regular basis and that efforts at ethics education make little or no difference (Desplaces et al., 2007; Jewe, 2008). This paper builds on Ping’s (2017) inter-disciplinary causal factor model on ‘Why Good People Do Bad Things’ which indicated that individual perceptions of justice regarding the subjective assessment of unfolding reality have a cumulative effect on the behaviour of individuals. When subjects perceived reality to be unfair or unjust they were more inclined to use moral neutralisations to justify acts that would objectively be considered to be in violation of their aspirational moral values. This perception and the invoked justifications then blinded them to the moral aspect of the issue at hand and allowed them to create unethical outcomes that they perceived to be just. Moral Intention Theory proposes that the key to creating a moral culture is to teach people how to set moral intention based on fairness, justice and reciprocity - and then to protect it from the flawed justifications that neutralise the very morals that good people aspire to live by.

https://submit.iafor.org/submission/submission62281/

Frank S. Ravitch
Michigan State University College of Law, United States

Biography

Frank S. Ravitch is Professor of Law and Walter H. Stowers Chair in Law in Religion at the Michigan State University College of Law. He also directs the MSU College of Law's Kyoto Japan Program. He is the author of Freedom’s Edge: Religious Freedom, Sexual Freedom, and the Future of America (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (Nominated for a Prose Award); Marketing Creation: The Law and Intelligent Design (Cambridge University Press 2012), Masters of Illusion: The Supreme Court and the Religion Clauses (NYU Press 2007); Law and Religion: Cases, Materials, and Readings (West 2004)(2nd Ed. 2008) (3rd Ed. 2015 with Larry Cata Backer), School Prayer and Discrimination: The Civil Rights of Religious Minorities and Dissenters (Northeastern University Press, 1999 & paperback edition 2001). He is co-author, with the late Boris Bittker and with Scott Idleman, of the first comprehensive treatise on Law and Religion in more than one hundred years, Religion and the State in American Law (Cambridge University Press 2015) (this project was supported by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment). He is co-author of Employment Discrimination Law (Prentice Hall, 2005) (with Pamela Sumners and Janis McDonald).

Professor Ravitch's articles, which have appeared in a number of highly regarded journals, have primarily focused on law and religion in the US and Japan. He has also written about civil rights law and disability discrimination. He has authored a number of amicus briefs to the US Supreme Court and has given numerous academic presentations nationally and internationally. In 2001, he was named a Fulbright scholar and served on the law faculty at Doshisha University in Japan. He has also made dozens of public presentations explaining the law to school groups, community groups, and service clubs, and has served as an expert commentator for print and broadcast media.

Professor Ravitch's current projects include a book on the Japanese Legal System (co-authored with Colin Jones), a chapter on law and religious tradition, and a project focusing on Law, Religion, and Authoritarianism. He speaks English and has basic conversational skills in Japanese and Hebrew.

Keynote Presentation (2023) | Ships in the Night: Expansion of the Separation of Politics and Religion in Japan as the U.S. Supreme Court Abandons the Separation of Church and State

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2022) | Religion and COVID 19 in the U.S.: The Good, the Bad, and the Shocking
Keynote Presentation (2020) | Religious Complicity and LGBTQ Rights
Keynote Presentation (2019) | The Religious and Ethical Void of Trumpism & the Oddity of Trump Support Among Some Evangelical Christians
Keynote Presentation (2018) | Law, Religion and Authoritarianism: From State Shinto to Religio-Trumpism
Featured Presentation (2017) | Freedom’s Edge: Balancing Religious Freedom and Equal Access to Facilities and Services for Transexuals
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Free Speech and Hate Speech – History, Story, Narrative
Roswiyani Roswiyani
Tarumanagara University, Indonesia

Biography

Roswiyani Roswiyani is a Psychologist at the Tarumanagara University Counseling Service. She is also a Lecturer of Clinical Psychology at the Tarumanagara University, Indonesia. She has a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Indonesia, Indonesia and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

She has a well-rounded background in clinical practice and refined talents in teaching and supervising. Her research interests focus on art therapy, depression, well-being, and resiliency among older adults. She also has extensive experience with psychological counseling, psychotherapy, and psychological assessment; and she has been a reviewer for national and international journals.

Featured Presentation (2022) | Perceived Stress of Students During Online Learning
Monty P. Satiadarma
Tarumanagara University, Indonesia

Biography

Dr Satiadarma is a clinical psychologist who has taught psychology at Tarumanagara University since 1994. He was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology at Tarumanagara, as well as the Dean of Psychology, Vice Rector and Rector of the university. He graduated with a degree in Psychology from the University of Indonesia, Art Therapy from Emporia State, Kansas, Family Counselling from Notre Dame de Namur, California, and Clinical Hypnotherapy from Irvine, California. He has published a number of books and has a particular interest in educational psychology and music & art therapy – methods with which he treated survivors of the Indonesian tsunami on behalf of the International Red Cross and the United Nations. He is a board member and area chair of the International Council of Psychology, and a founder and board member of the Asian Psychology Association.

Featured Presentation (2022) | Perceived Stress of Students During Online Learning

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2019) | “The Value of Internationalising Psychology” or “The Value of Indigenous Psychologies”
Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Psychological Literacy
IAAB Presentation (2017) | Life Changes, Identity Loss and Psychological Problems
Spotlight Presentation (2016) | Fairness and Happiness
Spotlight Presentation (2015) | The Lucifer Effect in Indonesian Educational Settings
Featured Presentation (2014)
Featured Presentation (2013)
Featured Presentation (2012)
Brian Victoria
Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK

Biography

Brian Victoria is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and a 1961 graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. He holds a MA in Buddhist Studies from Sōtō Zen sect-affiliated Komazawa University in Tokyo, and a PhD from the Department of Religious Studies at Temple University.

In addition to a second, enlarged edition of Zen At War (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Brian's major writings include Zen War Stories (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); an autobiographical work in Japanese entitled Gaijin de ari, Zen bozu de ari (As a Foreigner, As a Zen Priest), published by San-ichi Shobo in 1971; Zen Master Dōgen, coauthored with Prof. Yokoi Yūhō of Aichi-gakuin University (Weatherhill, 1976); and a translation of The Zen Life by Sato Koji (Weatherhill, 1972). In addition, Brian has published numerous journal articles, focusing on the relationship of not only Buddhism but religion in general, to violence and warfare.

From 2005 to 2013 Brian was a Professor of Japanese Studies and director of the AEA “Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions Program” at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, OH, USA. From 2013 to 2015 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan. His latest book, Zen Terror: The Death of Democracy in Prewar Japan was published by Rowman & Littlefield in February 2020. Brian is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies and a fully ordained Buddhist priest in the Sōtō Zen sect.

Featured Presentation (2023) | Are Modern Understandings of Karma the Teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha?
Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Recent Developments Concerning the Separation of Religion and State in Contemporary Japan

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2022) | The Rehabilitation of a Buddhist Heretic
Keynote Presentation (2021) | Zen Terror: Killing Compassionately?
Featured Presentation (2019) | Is Religious Tolerance Always Desirable: The Case of Shinto and Buddhism
Featured Presentation (2018) | Shinto: Window on Universal Religion
Featured Presentation (2017) | Military Conscription, Slavery and the Modern State
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Battles of Ideas: Identity and Alienation
Religion and COVID 19 in the U.S.: The Good, the Bad, and the Shocking
Keynote Presentation: Frank S. Ravitch

The responses to COVID-19 by religious individuals and entities in the United States have ranged from being scientifically informed, thoughtful, and balanced to endangering society. Similarly, the responses to religious concerns by government entities in the United States have ranged from scientifically sound while considering the needs of religious communities to pandering to certain religious communities in a manner that endangers society as a whole. Not surprisingly, much of this has coincided with the politicization of COVID in the United States. Thus, while the Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and other religious communities have generally supported vaccination, masking, and social distancing (including holding services on Zoom), there has been a divide within Christianity. Most Christian denominations support vaccination, masking, and social distancing, but denominations associated more with social conservatism (for example, a large number of white Evangelicals) oppose vaccination, masking and distancing. Meanwhile, the response by state governments to religious vaccine exemptions and religious gatherings has varied from sincere attempts to accommodate religion with no or minimal harm to public health to subverting religion to public health concerns to pandering to conservative religious entities at the expense of public health.

Read presenters' biography
Successful Prophecy? Jehovah’s Witnesses, Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine
Keynote Presentation: George D. Chryssides

Jehovah’s Witnesses have acquired a reputation for making prophecies that have failed. In this presentation, it is argued that such accusations are unfair: on the contrary, they have denied themselves plausible opportunities to claim success. In December 2005, the front page of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ Awake! magazine bore the heading: “The Next Global Pandemic – When?” Despite the Watch Tower Society’s interest in prophecy, they did not claim the Covid-19 pandemic as fulfilment of this warning, but as one of a number of signs that the end of the world’s present system is near. The King of the South, to whom the biblical prophet Daniel refers (Daniel 11: 5-13) is identified with Russia, and predicted to wage a large-scale war. Although such predictions could be used as examples of successful predictive prophecy, Jehovah’s Witnesses have merely regarded such catastrophes as signs that we are living in the earth’s last days. Instead of boasting successful prediction, Witnesses have prepared themselves for such disasters, and the presentation examines some of the ways in which they have anticipated natural and human disasters, and adapted their practices accordingly.

Read presenter's biography
The Rehabilitation of a Buddhist Heretic
Keynote Presentation: Brian Victoria

Unlike the Theravāda tradition, the Mahāyāna tradition of Buddhism allows Buddhist clerics, male or female, to regain their clerical status if they previously lost it due to having broken one or more of the four major rules of the clerical life, i.e. the four pārājikas (defeats). This possibility is included in the Māhāyana Brahmajāla Sūtra (J. Bonmō-kyō). While clerics who intentionally break one or more of the pārājikas are still subject to the loss of their clerical status, as Bernard Faure notes, “the culprit can now rehabilitate himself through his own repentance and through the merits of others.”

This presentation deals with one such cleric, a Sōtō Zen cleric by the name of Uchiyama Gudō (1874–1911), who lost his clerical status in 1909 and was subsequently hung to death by the Japanese government on January 24, 1911. It was not until April 1993, 84 years later, that Gudō’s clerical status was restored. The restoration occurred because the Sōtō Zen sect admitted Gudō “had been a victim of the national policy of that day.” In essence, the Sōtō Zen sect admitted it had erred in depriving Gudō of his clerical status in 1909 since he had violated government policy, not one of the pārājikas as charged. This presentation will focus on the process of Gudō’s rehabilitation in postwar Japan.

Read presenter's biography
Ethical, Religious and Philosophical Dilemmas in Responding to COVID
Plenary Panel

One of the most worrying aspects of the COVID pandemic was the “locking down” of huge swathes of the global population, for the general security of the population, for “their own good”. When China first responded to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan by incarcerating the whole of the city, it was an effective but shocking response. Many commentators opined that China might be able to do that, but in countries where freedoms of movement and assembly were societal cornerstones, surely that wouldn’t be possible. However, “lockdowns” quickly spread, and the ability of China to control its population through what amounted to mass incarceration was lauded as highly efficient, evidencing the superiority of an autocratic system in times of crisis.

Soon lockdowns were complemented by track and trace technologies that not only allowed, but mandated unprecedented invasions of privacy, justifying enormous data transfer between individuals and the government and private sector contractors.

Responding to COVID: Trauma and Recovery
Plenary Panel

The coronavirus pandemic had an enormous impact on the lives of billions of people simultaneously across the globe, disrupting and straining many of the relationships and support structures that are the sinews of society. Lockdowns exacerbated cases of loneliness and isolation, domestic abuse, and suicides, and shutdowns adversely affected huge economic losses. Many elderly died alone, while children lost precious months and years of the education so crucial to the building of lives. Fear and anxiety became prevalent as 2020 and 2021 became years of collective disruption and trauma. We are only just beginning to come to terms with the enormous ramifications of the pandemic and the first collective trauma of the globalised era.

In this plenary panel, a group of experts will look at the damage that has been done, as well as the lessons we might learn as we seek to recover.

Building Resilience through Self-care: Art and Aesthetic Wellness
Featured Presentation: Amy Wai Sum Lee

Into the second year of the pandemic, most educational institutes have made adjustments in order to continue the delivery of courses and programmes. Some regions have resumed a kind of normality and returned to face-to-face interaction for regular classes, and some regions may have adopted a hybrid mode to facilitate better reach to students. No matter what the actual implemented mechanism is, educators over the world have come to realise that rethinking “education” is necessary, in terms of the mode of delivery, as well as the value and kind of education we are offering to students. Besides reflecting on the mode and nature of education, another consensus among educators is the need to enhance students’ resilience, both in formal education and informal curriculum. This presentation is a proposal on building resilience of university students through co-curricular activities, focusing on self-care. Young people in the higher education sector are going through the threshold of adulthood, and this period is already full of challenges about personal identity and value. The pandemic is only a reminder to us of the importance of this core component for university students in their education. The proposal here is to use art as an indirect and informal learning experience to guide students to better self-care.

Read presenter's biography
Perceived Stress of Students During Online Learning
Featured Presentation: Monty P. Satiadarma & Roswiyani Roswiyani

Online learning has become one of the most prominent global issues related to COVID-19, and many students who have never experienced an online learning program have been forced to adapt to a new system. The students perceive the program as stressful for a number of reasons, including limited networking facilities and social interactions. Some students described the stress with complaints of physical symptoms. One hundred seventy-seven (177) students participated in this research. 32 male students and 145 female students (age 17-23 years) responded to PSS (Perceived Stress Scale by Cohen et al, 1983), and results indicate that mostly freshmen (age 17-18) experienced moderate levels of stress, followed by sophomores (age 19-20). Moderate levels of stress were experienced by 69% of female and 71% of male students, and high levels of stress were experienced by 26% of female and 21% of male students. Most students did not report any medical problems; however, the most medical complaints related to their perceived stress were digestive problems (6.78% reported moderate perceived stress levels, and 3.38% reported high perceived stress levels). Qualitative data based on individual interviews have been included for further consideration.

Read presenter's biography
Mimi Bong
Korea University, South Korea

Biography

Mimi Bong is Professor of Educational Psychology and the Associate Director of the Brain and Motivation Research Institute (bMRI) of Korea University. Bong has been studying motivation of adolescents in school settings and published over 60 articles and book chapters on related topics over the past 18 years. Her work appears in journals such as Journal of Educational Psychology, Educational Psychologist, Educational Psychology Review, and Contemporary Educational Psychology, among others.

Bong was recognized as the 8th most productive educational psychologist for the period of 1997-2001 and received the ‘Richard E. Snow Award for Early Contributions in Educational Psychology’ from the American Psychological Association/Division 15. She is the Associate Editor of American Educational Research Journal for the Teaching, Learning, and Human Development section and has served or currently serves on the editorial boards of Child Development, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Educational Psychologist, Educational Psychology Review, Educational Researcher, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Experimental Education, and Theory into Practice.

Previous ACERP Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2019) | Why Do You Study? Complex Answers to a Simple Question
Download Presentation Slides
George D. Chryssides
The University of Birmingham, UK

Biography

Dr George D. Chryssides is Honorary Research Fellow in Contemporary Religion at the University of Birmingham, after being Head of Religious Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, from 2001 to 2008. George Chryssides obtained a First Class Honours MA degree in philosophy at the University of Glasgow, and a First Class Honours Bachelor of Divinity in systematic theology. He subsequently undertook postgraduate research at the University of Oxford, obtaining his doctorate in 1974.

From the 1980s, George Chryssides’ main interest has been new religious movements, on which he has authored numerous books and scholarly articles. Recent publications include Historical Dictionary of Jehovah’s Witnesses (2008), Heaven’s Gate: Postmodernity and Popular Culture in a Suicide Group (2011), Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements (2012), The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements (co-edited with Benjamin E. Zeller,2014), and Jehovah’s Witnesses: Continuity and Change (2016). He is a regular presenter at national and international conferences.

Keynote Presentation (2022) | Successful Prophecy? Jehovah’s Witnesses, Covid-19 and the War in Ukraine
Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.

A Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance, Dr Haldane is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade (Serbia), a Visiting Professor at the School of Business at Doshisha University (Japan), and a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (USA).

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

Roberto Ravera
ASL1 of Imperia, University of Turin & University of Genoa, Italy

Biography

Professor Roberto Ravera is the Director Department of Clinical Psychology at ASL1 of Imperia (Italian National Health Service), an associate professor of Ethno-psychology and Ethno-psychiatry at the University of Turin (IUS-TO), Italy, University of Genoa, Italy, and visiting professor at Assam Don Bosco University, India and a researcher in Psychophysiology & Developmental Psychology in collaboration with Professor Vittorio Gallese at the University of Parma, Italy.

He worked in Sierra Leone for fifteen years and founded the NGO Ravera Children Rehabilitation Centre (RCRC), dedicated to caring for children and adolescents with trauma or mental diseases, juvenile inmates, and abused and neglected children. He is President of the foundation FHM ITALIA which sponsors international health cooperation. In addition, he has held conferences at many universities and institutions in different parts of the world about the psychopathological consequences of trauma in childhood. In the last decade, he has made significant commitments to studying a sustainable anthropological vision of cooperation in Africa. Furthermore, he has written many articles and books about the emotional, brain and mind implications for traumatized children and educational issues in the post-COVID-19 world.

Frank S. Ravitch
Michigan State University College of Law, United States

Biography

Frank S. Ravitch is Professor of Law and Walter H. Stowers Chair in Law in Religion at the Michigan State University College of Law. He also directs the MSU College of Law's Kyoto Japan Program. He is the author of Freedom’s Edge: Religious Freedom, Sexual Freedom, and the Future of America (Cambridge University Press, 2016) (Nominated for a Prose Award); Marketing Creation: The Law and Intelligent Design (Cambridge University Press 2012), Masters of Illusion: The Supreme Court and the Religion Clauses (NYU Press 2007); Law and Religion: Cases, Materials, and Readings (West 2004)(2nd Ed. 2008) (3rd Ed. 2015 with Larry Cata Backer), School Prayer and Discrimination: The Civil Rights of Religious Minorities and Dissenters (Northeastern University Press, 1999 & paperback edition 2001). He is co-author, with the late Boris Bittker and with Scott Idleman, of the first comprehensive treatise on Law and Religion in more than one hundred years, Religion and the State in American Law (Cambridge University Press 2015) (this project was supported by a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment). He is co-author of Employment Discrimination Law (Prentice Hall, 2005) (with Pamela Sumners and Janis McDonald).

Professor Ravitch's articles, which have appeared in a number of highly regarded journals, have primarily focused on law and religion in the US and Japan. He has also written about civil rights law and disability discrimination. He has authored a number of amicus briefs to the US Supreme Court and has given numerous academic presentations nationally and internationally. In 2001, he was named a Fulbright scholar and served on the law faculty at Doshisha University in Japan. He has also made dozens of public presentations explaining the law to school groups, community groups, and service clubs, and has served as an expert commentator for print and broadcast media.

Professor Ravitch's current projects include a book on the Japanese Legal System (co-authored with Colin Jones), a chapter on law and religious tradition, and a project focusing on Law, Religion, and Authoritarianism. He speaks English and has basic conversational skills in Japanese and Hebrew.

Keynote Presentation (2023) | Ships in the Night: Expansion of the Separation of Politics and Religion in Japan as the U.S. Supreme Court Abandons the Separation of Church and State

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2022) | Religion and COVID 19 in the U.S.: The Good, the Bad, and the Shocking
Keynote Presentation (2020) | Religious Complicity and LGBTQ Rights
Keynote Presentation (2019) | The Religious and Ethical Void of Trumpism & the Oddity of Trump Support Among Some Evangelical Christians
Keynote Presentation (2018) | Law, Religion and Authoritarianism: From State Shinto to Religio-Trumpism
Featured Presentation (2017) | Freedom’s Edge: Balancing Religious Freedom and Equal Access to Facilities and Services for Transexuals
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Free Speech and Hate Speech – History, Story, Narrative
Roswiyani Roswiyani
Tarumanagara University, Indonesia

Biography

Roswiyani Roswiyani is a Psychologist at the Tarumanagara University Counseling Service. She is also a Lecturer of Clinical Psychology at the Tarumanagara University, Indonesia. She has a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Indonesia, Indonesia and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

She has a well-rounded background in clinical practice and refined talents in teaching and supervising. Her research interests focus on art therapy, depression, well-being, and resiliency among older adults. She also has extensive experience with psychological counseling, psychotherapy, and psychological assessment; and she has been a reviewer for national and international journals.

Featured Presentation (2022) | Perceived Stress of Students During Online Learning
Monty P. Satiadarma
Tarumanagara University, Indonesia

Biography

Dr Satiadarma is a clinical psychologist who has taught psychology at Tarumanagara University since 1994. He was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology at Tarumanagara, as well as the Dean of Psychology, Vice Rector and Rector of the university. He graduated with a degree in Psychology from the University of Indonesia, Art Therapy from Emporia State, Kansas, Family Counselling from Notre Dame de Namur, California, and Clinical Hypnotherapy from Irvine, California. He has published a number of books and has a particular interest in educational psychology and music & art therapy – methods with which he treated survivors of the Indonesian tsunami on behalf of the International Red Cross and the United Nations. He is a board member and area chair of the International Council of Psychology, and a founder and board member of the Asian Psychology Association.

Featured Presentation (2022) | Perceived Stress of Students During Online Learning

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2019) | “The Value of Internationalising Psychology” or “The Value of Indigenous Psychologies”
Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Psychological Literacy
IAAB Presentation (2017) | Life Changes, Identity Loss and Psychological Problems
Spotlight Presentation (2016) | Fairness and Happiness
Spotlight Presentation (2015) | The Lucifer Effect in Indonesian Educational Settings
Featured Presentation (2014)
Featured Presentation (2013)
Featured Presentation (2012)
Dexter Da Silva
Keisen University, Japan

Biography

Dr Dexter Da Silva is currently Professor of Educational Psychology at Keisen University in Tokyo. He has taught EFL at junior high school, language schools, and universities in Sydney, Australia, and for more than two decades has been living, and teaching at the tertiary level, in Japan. Professor Da Silva was educated at the University of Sydney (BA, Dip. Ed., MA), and the University of Western Sydney (PhD). He has presented and co-presented at conferences in Asia, Australia, Europe and the United States, co-edited two books on Motivation in Foreign Language Learning, and written or co-written articles and book chapters on education-related topics, such as trust, student motivation, autonomy, and content-based language teaching. He is a past editor of On CUE Journal, past president of the Asian Psychological Association, regular reviewer for conferences, proceedings, journal articles and book chapters, and regularly co-chairs and participates in the Organising Committee of conferences on Motivation, Language Learning and Teaching, and Psychology and the Behavioral Sciences.

Featured Panel Presentation (2019) | “The Value of Internationalising Psychology” or “The Value of Indigenous Psychologies”

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2018) | Psychological Literacy: The Most Important Literacy for the 21st Century
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Battles of Ideas: Identity and Alienation
Featured Presentation (2015)
Featured Presentation (2014)
Featured Presentation (2012)
Brian Victoria
Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK

Biography

Brian Victoria is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and a 1961 graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. He holds a MA in Buddhist Studies from Sōtō Zen sect-affiliated Komazawa University in Tokyo, and a PhD from the Department of Religious Studies at Temple University.

In addition to a second, enlarged edition of Zen At War (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Brian's major writings include Zen War Stories (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); an autobiographical work in Japanese entitled Gaijin de ari, Zen bozu de ari (As a Foreigner, As a Zen Priest), published by San-ichi Shobo in 1971; Zen Master Dōgen, coauthored with Prof. Yokoi Yūhō of Aichi-gakuin University (Weatherhill, 1976); and a translation of The Zen Life by Sato Koji (Weatherhill, 1972). In addition, Brian has published numerous journal articles, focusing on the relationship of not only Buddhism but religion in general, to violence and warfare.

From 2005 to 2013 Brian was a Professor of Japanese Studies and director of the AEA “Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions Program” at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, OH, USA. From 2013 to 2015 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan. His latest book, Zen Terror: The Death of Democracy in Prewar Japan was published by Rowman & Littlefield in February 2020. Brian is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies and a fully ordained Buddhist priest in the Sōtō Zen sect.

Featured Presentation (2023) | Are Modern Understandings of Karma the Teaching of Shakyamuni Buddha?
Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Recent Developments Concerning the Separation of Religion and State in Contemporary Japan

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2022) | The Rehabilitation of a Buddhist Heretic
Keynote Presentation (2021) | Zen Terror: Killing Compassionately?
Featured Presentation (2019) | Is Religious Tolerance Always Desirable: The Case of Shinto and Buddhism
Featured Presentation (2018) | Shinto: Window on Universal Religion
Featured Presentation (2017) | Military Conscription, Slavery and the Modern State
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Battles of Ideas: Identity and Alienation