Under the global spread of qualitative research, I would like to congratulate the establishment of the Asian Qualitative Inquiry Association (AQIA) in 2022, after establishing qualitative research associations in North America and Europe. These results would not have been possible without the efforts and passion of many qualitative researchers in Korea and Asia. I am deeply honored to be the first president of this important and historic academic space and feel a great sense of duty and responsibility

    In particular, Asia has not been regarded as a space to search for new knowledge amid long Western imperialism and cultural colonialism despite its long historical/cultural/academic tradition. In the history of such unequal search for knowledge, Asia has been a space where Western knowledge is imported and strengthened by Westerners and Asians. In that respect, qualitative research, aimed at discovering, understanding, and creating new theories, can break the historical link of colonial thinking to restore and create Asian academic spaces as independent intellectual territory. I believe that such academic direction is much overdue.

    However, human life and culture are no longer geographically, culturally, or economically isolated, considering the increasing transnational characteristics of the economic, cultural, demographical and political exchanges and movements. Thus, In this respect, Asian studies and post-colonial studies shall not remain under the West and non-West divide but instead move toward new knowledge and discourse production of cross-cultural and global social science. To contribute to the advancement of qualitative inquiry discourse, AQIA shall pay attention to phenomena, themes, and methods that cannot appear in the space of Western qualitative research. It will be possible for us to contribute to exploring and creating new qualitative research knowledge that Western qualitative researchers cannot. I think that this search for qualitative research in the East will contribute to overcoming the characteristics and problems of this era, in which Western-centered qualitative research is positioned as a meta-narrative of global qualitative research.

    In doing so, I sincerely expect that in the near future, the theories and knowledge of Asian qualitative researchers and their names will appear anew in the intellectual space of international qualitative research, full of the names of Western qualitative research theories and scholars. After that, I earnestly hope that the day will come when the indigenous and cultural knowledge produced by Asian qualitative researchers will be cited and studied by Western qualitative researchers and further accepted as a new theory.