Cambridge hosts workshop for early career researchers in Chinese studies

The China Research Workshop brought together more than 40 graduate students from universities across the UK and continental Europe with senior academics from the Department of East Asian Studies for sessions covering the gamut of academic activities.

Hans van de Ven, chair of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of Modern Chinese History, said: “The Faculty is delighted to welcome some of the best PhD students in Chinese studies. This is exactly the kind of workshop we need to help build Chinese studies in the UK and Europe.”

Anna Boermel, one of the Workshop’s two organisers, said: “We are delighted with the response; we received a lot of high-quality applications from young scholars specialising in different fields of Chinese Studies.”

Dr Thomas Jansen, her co-organiser, said: “We hope that the event will help forge lasting links between established scholars and those just embarking on their academic career, as well as provide a useful forum for the development of professional skills.”

Faculty members of the Department of East Asian Studies, together with a colleague from the Department of Politics, ran groups for different areas of study, ranging from the dawn of Chinese history to current developments in Chinese literature, with participants presenting and discussing their work-in-progress.

Based on empirical data gathered in urban and rural China, participants in the anthropology and sociology- group debated the applicability of Western concepts in social science, such as ‘the public sphere’ and ‘civil society’, and the appropriateness of treating ‘the Chinese state’ as a homogenous entity, given struggles between different factions, rapidly changing policies and competition between central and local government.

The ‘Early and Medieval China’-session tackled the opportunities and challenges resulting from huge amounts of recent archaeological data, as well as other new sources, and held a lively debate about the best way to describe the complex religious landscape of early imperial China, which frequently defies such labels as Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian.

Mieke Matthyssen, a student from Belgium, said: “I am delighted to be here and to meet other researchers from my field. It’s been a great opportunity to network with some of the best scholars working on China."

Young academics also got to grips with the nuts and bolts of academic publishing with Tamsine O’Riordan, Asian Studies editor with Zed Books, and learnt about the best ways to find and obtain research funding from a specialist at the University’s Research Services Division.

Before leaving Cambridge the participants enjoyed guided tours of the Fitzwilliam Museum, currently hosting an exhibition of 19th century Chinese flower paintings, and the Needham Institute. The Institute is the home of the Science and Civilisation in China Project and hosts a unique collection of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English works on the history of traditional East Asian science, technology and medicine.