International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine

16/06/2026

Call for Submissions:
We are pleased to renew our invitation for submissions for the Charles Leslie Prize.

The Charles Leslie prize seeks to honour the work of Charles Leslie and his dedication to IASTAM, and aims to encourage young scholars in the field that he helped to establish. Sadly, Professor Leslie died in 2009. It is hoped that these awards act in some way as a fitting tribute to the man himself, a much-liked and respected colleague, as well as for his outstanding contributions to the field of Asian Medicine. This prize is awarded to the best original, unpublished scholarly essay on Asian medicine submitted to the competition and judged by the IASTAM Council.
The nominee for the award must be a member in good standing of IASTAM, and must fall into any of the following categories:
-a practitioner of an Asian medical tradition (with fewer than three publications), or
-a graduate student, or
-a recent PhD who received his/her doctoral degree fewer than five years prior to the deadline for nomination, or
-a scholar who is in a contingent faculty position without tenure or long-term contract (e.g., adjunct, one-year visiting scholar, etc.)
There are no age restrictions on entering for this prize. The paper should apply methods from anthropology, history, or any other academic discipline to the critical study of Asian medical systems in context, and from any period up to the present. The winning essay will be announced in IASTAM publications and the society website.
In order to be considered for the prize, all manuscripts must be submitted to the Asian Medicine journal through the normal submission process (https://brill.com/asme) no later than Sept 1, 2026. Please follow all points in the Instructions for Authors document; however, at the very top of your manuscript you should label it with {Submission for Charles Leslie Prize}. This will trigger our editorial team to submit it to IASTAM for consideration for the prize. All competition submissions received before the deadline will undergo the normal editorial board screening and peer review process. All papers that are accepted will move forward to publication in the next available journal issue, and the winning paper will be selected from among these manuscripts.
Previous recipients:
2021 Will Ceurvels
2016 Di Lu
2013 Karen McNamara
2009 Hong Saeyoung

https://iastam.org/awards/ #:~:text=Charles%20Leslie%20Prize&text=This%20prize%20is%20awarded%20to,judged%20by%20the%20IASTAM%20Council.

10/06/2026

The TCM Community will host A Midsummer TCM Journey 2026 on 27 June 2026, a global online gathering that brings together practitioners, students, researchers, and enthusiasts of Traditional Chinese Medicine for learning, exchange, and inspiration.

At 11:00, IASTAM Vice President James Flowers will join the discussion.

https://www.tcmcommunity.com/june27program

04/06/2026

01/06/2026

https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/who-global-traditionalmedicine-centre--annual-report-2025

Publications of the World Health Organization

27/05/2026

Does Tibetan medicine use animals as medicine?
🦌🐸🐻🦉🐢🦀🦏
The answer is more interesting than you might think — and it's changing fast. Stephan Kloos's new article in Asian Medicine traces how and why Sowa Rigpa has been quietly moving away from animal ingredients since the 1980s, driven by environmental change, economic pressures, legal considerations, politics, and Buddhist ethics all at once.

Dive into the freely accessible article here:

Abstract One of the fundamental principles of Tibetan pharmacology is that all substances – correctly understood and used – have medicinal properties. This includes animal parts and products, which, like in other Asian medical traditions, constitute an integral part of Sowa Rigpa’s classical p...

25/05/2026

21/05/2026

Hybrid Conference on Buddhism and Medicine ☸️🌱

How do Buddhist healing traditions shape understandings of health, wellbeing, and medical practice across Asia and into the present?
Starting today, the conference Buddhism and Medicine: People, Paradigms and Perspectives, hosted by the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol (21–23 May 2026), brings together scholars exploring Buddhist therapeutics, diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, gendered healing practices, and medical knowledge across historical and contemporary contexts.

The conference is hybrid, free, and open to the public (registration required)

https://buddhiststudies.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/?page_id=435&fbclid=IwY2xjawR8WPFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeWqU8BD00l_5vptzn2qqihw3lkl7ICBMo3jR092ZaStEYxzMjqftanJEfOg4_aem_oOeUuXSH2ibq_fDEsgEGVw

Buddhism and Medicine Conference Buddhism and Medicine: People, Paradigms and Perspectives Thursday, May 21 – Saturday May 23, 2026 University of Bristol This conference marks two decades of major advances in the study of Buddhist healing traditions, bringing together established scholars and emer...

14/05/2026

06/05/2026

Charles Leslie Prize

The Charles Leslie prize seeks to honour the work of Charles Leslie and his dedication to IASTAM, and aims to encourage young scholars in the field that he helped to establish. Sadly, Professor Leslie died in 2009. It is hoped that these awards act in some way as a fitting tribute to the man himself, a much-liked and respected colleague, as well as for his outstanding contributions to the field of Asian Medicine. This prize is awarded to the best original, unpublished scholarly essay on Asian medicine submitted to the competition and judged by the IASTAM Council.

The nominee for the award must be a member in good standing of IASTAM, and must fall into any of the following categories:

-a practitioner of an Asian medical tradition (with fewer than three publications), or
-a graduate student, or
-a recent PhD who received his/her doctoral degree fewer than five years prior to the deadline for nomination, or
-a scholar who is in a contingent faculty position without tenure or long-term contract (e.g., adjunct, one-year visiting scholar, etc.)

There are no age restrictions on entering for this prize. The paper should apply methods from anthropology, history, or any other academic discipline to the critical study of Asian medical systems in context, and from any period up to the present. The winning essay will be announced in IASTAM publications and the society website.

In order to be considered for the prize, all manuscripts must be submitted to the Asian Medicine journal through the normal submission process (https://brill.com/asme) no later than Sept 1, 2026. Please follow all points in the Instructions for Authors document; however, at the very top of your manuscript you should label it with {Submission for Charles Leslie Prize}. This will trigger our editorial team to submit it to IASTAM for consideration for the prize. All competition submissions received before the deadline will undergo the normal editorial board screening and peer review process. All papers that are accepted will move forward to publication in the next available journal issue, and the winning paper will be selected from among these manuscripts.

Previous recipients:

2021 Will Ceurvels
2016 Di Lu
2013 Karen McNamara
2009 Hong Saeyoung

https://iastam.org/awards/

Awards Arthur L. Basham Medal The Arthur L. Basham Medal was instituted by Prof. Paul U. Unschuld during his period as President of IASTAM. The award is intended to preserve the memory of Professor Arthur Llewellyn Basham (1914-1986), co-founder of IASTAM with Prof. Charles Leslie, and to honour his...

03/05/2026

Dear colleagues!

I Pierce Salguero would like to invite you to contribute to the scholarly Substack, Asian Medicine Zone (https://asianmedicinezone.com), which is a publication of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine.

As Asian medicines are becoming more ever more important players in global healthcare, it is important for scholarly voices and perspectives about these topics to reach more people outside the academy. A typical post in AMZ is read by 400-700 people in the first month of its publication, and it is delivered via email to over 200 subscribers. While AMZ is by no means a replacement for articles published in scholarly journals, it is clear that posts distributed there can have much broader and more immediate circulation than scholarly articles.

With this in mind, we would like to invite you to consider writing content (or recording a video essay) for AMZ. Whether it's a short note on something you are researching, an opinion piece about medical policy, a reflection on current affairs, or any other kind of writing that would be of interest to others who seriously think about Asian medicine, we would like to publish it.

Authorship on this platform is open to established authors with a track record of publication in the field, recent PhD recipients, and doctoral students. AMZ does not copyedit or proofread articles and there is no peer review process, although there is a light editorial review done before publication by the site moderator.

If you are looking for a high-impact home for your work, please reach out to me to discuss further.