The Institute of Asian Studies (IAS) was established in 2019 by merging the former Institute of South and Central Asia (ISSA) and most of the former Institute of the Far East (IFE). It is one of the largest departments within the Faculty of Arts of the UK, and moreover, it continues a tradition of exploring this area that dates back to the late 19th century. Members of the IAS are engaged in teaching, scholarship and research in seven specialisations within Asian Studies: Indology (since 1945), Indonesian studies (since 1953), Japanese studies (since 1947), Korean studies (since 1950) Mongolian studies, (since 1950), Tibetan studies (since 2009) and Vietnamese studies (since 1961). The individual specialisations offered by our Institute are united by their thematic distinctiveness and uniqueness in terms of the possibilities of their study within the Czech Republic and, to a large extent, in the European context. Thus, we find responses in our countries of interest as well as in Europe, other Asian countries and the USA. In all specialisations, the emphasis is on mastery of the language, which is a condition for the meaningful use of methodological procedures of general disciplines (linguistics, history, literary science, anthropology, social sciences) in learning about different cultures. Mastery of a language in the specific terms of each discipline implies not only knowledge of its written and spoken variants, but also familiarity with historical, literary, religious and social contexts. Emphasis is also placed on the graduate’s practical ability to navigate in the given environment and thus be able to conduct negotiations with partners in the target countries or to carry out their own research. Almost all of the current members of the IAS started working at the Faculty of Arts after 1989, and many graduates from this period have been working successfully at other universities and research institutions in the Czech Republic and abroad.