The Initiative for the Study of Asian Catholics (ISAC) is an international consortium supporting the development of social scientific research on Asian Catholics. It is currently hosted by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore.
Their aims are:
- To do new research projects and contribute to the ones already existing in countries such as the Philippines, Hong Kong and India, among others.
- To expand and deepen conversations that investigate the realities, socio-cultural contributions and challenges of Asian Catholics both locally and globally.
- Foster research through the perspectives of anthropology, art, environmental studies, economics, gender studies, political science and sociology.
- Catholics living in Asia are often minority communities, and even targets of hostility and discrimination. Available research on Asian Catholics is limited, even though said research has made important contributions to the understanding of ethnic and national realities.
For this reason:
- They generate collaborative research projects, academic panels and conferences, digital collections, and “perbualans,” informal online seminars where they talk about research papers.
- They encourage research on Asian Catholics with a university press book series, a podcast series, roundtables, and The Observatory, a blog where they share short research papers.
- They created a Research Unit at De La Salle University Manila to generate digital collections.
- They intend to become a research consortium where researchers can find collaborators and be an information resource on Catholic Asians for the public.