“This year’s winner of the ASCA Book Award brings together ancient tradition and modern media in an innovative and deeply engaged way. It asks us to think about how writing and art interact through a practice with deep roots, which is being transformed and reinvented in the context of a changing society and the growth of digital culture…. Ink Studies takes us from the process of learning calligraphy, with its links to discipline and imitation of respected traditional styles, to the everyday and playful art of ‘water calligraphy’, practised in parks across China each morning…. The committee were deeply impressed with the depth, diligence and inventiveness of Vermeeren’s work, which is itself a work of mediation between past and present, art and writing, social structures and individual experiences. We are very pleased to present the award to Ink Studies.”

Winner of the 2026 ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) Book Award

“One of the core strengths of Vermeeren’s monograph, for example, is the skill with which she embeds contemporary lived realities within a deeper frame of historical reference, summarising key lines of development in an engaging manner ideally suited for those unfamiliar with the topic as well as for scholars of Chinese culture seeking to align her argument with their own areas of expertise…. Guest’s Invisible Ink and Vermeeren’s Ink Studies, both as standalone and corresponding texts, bring a much-needed depth of analysis to two aspects of contemporary Chinese artistic and cultural expression that have gained increasing global visibility over the past two decades.”

Third Text