LUCC News, July 2023
The July 2023 edition of LUCC's newsletter is out.
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LUCC News: July 2023
Summer holidays have arrived in Lancaster, but LUCC’s research and events continue apace with our China Research Map, a new flagship resource to inform and support research on and with China across all disciplines, set for launch on 31 July.
On 10 August LUCC Fellows Lingxia (Jocelin) Zhou and Chris Longman will lead a seminar drawing on decades of wisdom on the international classroom: Cultivating Dragon Eggs: Transcultural Teaching and Learning as Transformational Education. RSVP is essential for catering purposes.
We’ve heard in May and June from Rong Fong on Singapore-China media production; Yunyan Li on the lived experiences of women in China; and Giorgio Ceccarelli from Ca’Foscari University of Venice gave a PhD seminar on the Chinese film industry.
Photography from Hao Yang’s solo exhibition Back to the Clouds — The Ritual of Pagoda is now available on the LUCC website. The show was exhibited from May 22-27 at the Storey Gallery in Lancaster with support from LUCC, LUCI, LICA and others.
Read on below for an introduction to LUCC’s new Research Lead, Dr. Yunyan Li, welcoming two new LUCC Doctoral Fellows, and the latest news and research from LUCC members..
Upcoming Events
31 July 2023
Mapping China-Related Research Across Disciplines: Trajectories, Opportunities and Challenges
Interdisciplinary Roundtable
Speakers:
- Yunyan Li, LUCC / LUMS
- Andrew Chubb, LUCC / PPR
Time: Monday, 31July, 2023, 12-1pm
Place: Hybrid, online via Teams
**In-person places are fully booked, to join online please send an email to: china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk
10August 2023
Cultivating Dragon Eggs: Transcultural Teaching and Learning as Transformational Education
Speaker: Chris Longman (Education Development), Lingxia Jocelin Zhou (DeLC)
Time: 1-230pm, Thursday 10 August
Place: County South B59 Meeting Room
LUNCH SERVED - RSVP ESSENTIAL BY 3 AUGUST to china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk
Sino-Foreign Research Collaboration: The Evolving Funding Landscape
Interdisciplinary Workshop
Time: Michaelmas 2023
Place: TBA – register interest at china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk
Why Does the West Get So Much Wrong About China?: Reflections on 33 Years of Straddling the Border
Research Seminar
Speaker: Howard Davies, Hong Kong Polytechnic
Time: TBA
Place: Online via Teams – link available from china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk
Laughing, Lost in the Mountains. Towards a New Modality of Seeing Organizations
Research Seminar
Speaker: Ant Hesketh, LUMS
Time: December 2023
Place: TBA – register interest at china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk
Sino-Foreign Research Collaboration: Navigating the Security Minefield
Interdisciplinary Roundtable
Time: December 2023
Place: TBA - register interest at china.centre@lancaster.ac.uk
People
LUCC is delighted to welcome Yunyan Li (LUMS) to the Directorate as Research Lead, and two new Doctoral Fellows, Zi Quan (LICA) and Qin Fan (Linguistics).
Yunyan Li
Dr. Yunyan Li as Research Lead. Currently a Senior Research Associate in the Entrepreneurship and Strategy Department at LUMS, Dr. Li is an expert in women’s issues in China. Her work focuses on how the recalibration of institutional arrangements in socio-economic reform and the welfare system in rural and urban China affect women’s lived experiences under the interaction between modernisation and transforming Confucianism. As LUCC’s Research Lead, Yunyan develops and oversees the centre’s research strategy and internal research advisory functions.
Zi Quan
Based in LICA, Zi Quan researches and practices Ancient Chinese Cosmology Visual Art. Her doctoral research tries to find the image mode related to time, space and the universe in early Chinese history, and apply them to contemporary ink painting creation. Already an accomplished artist in her own right, Zi Quan’s work can be viewed at: https://www.artstation.com/ziquan1
Qin Fan
Part of Lancaster’s world-renowned Linguistics Department, Qin Fan’s work investigates the discursive value creation of sustainable fashion in Shanghai. Using an innovative mixed-methods approach, Fan examines how Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of distinction manifests itself in the promotion of fashion products that are regarded as ‘ethical’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘authentic’.
Profiles of all LUCC’s fellows are available at our People page.
Research News
LU China Research Map
With generous support from a grant from the FASS Research Fund, LUCC is developing an interactive resource to map and visualise all of Lancaster University’s research on, in and with China – broadly defined to encompass the Sinophone world. Victoria (Yue) Su has been appointed as Program Officer to develop visualisations, working with Research Lead Yunyan Li and Director Andrew Chubb to deliver the new resource, which is designed to support collaboration across disciplinary lines and raise awareness of the broad scope of China-linked research at Lancaster.
The China Research Map and dashboard will be available from August on LUCC’s Research page, at: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/LUCC/research
Scientific collaboration amid geopolitical tensions: a comparison of Sweden and Australia
Co-authored with collaborators from Sweden and Australia, this new article in Higher Education illuminates the key variations in country-level responses to the challenges of international science amid geopolitical tensions. The Swedish government has been largely passive, but Swedish funding agencies have developed “responsible internationalisation” guidelines that aim to induce proactive reflection by institutions and individual researchers. Australia’s approach, by contrast, has centred on legislation, the exercise of ministerial powers, along with sector-wide enactment of expanded due diligence protocols. The comparison highlights key differences in the actors, methods and goals of responses to the intensifying geopolitics of scientific collaboration.
Read the article open-access at: https://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10734-023-01066-0
Unboxing the Chinese blind boxes among China’s grown-up missing children – Aiqing Wang
Aiqing Wang’s piece in Global Media and China, co-authored with colleagues at the University of Nottingham Ningbo and Wenzhou-Kean University looks into the collection, exchange and resale of figurines in China. This paper situates the ‘Blind Box’ consumption, collection and prosumption practices in China within globalisation and the ‘media-mix’ fandom, which is to consume and resell media merchandise in opaque packages as probability goods. We re-centre the focus of fandom studies on the then much neglected ‘missing child’ and now the ‘emerging adult’ in a globalising world. We argue the Chinese emerging adult consumes, collects and resells Blind Boxes as a generative and agentic collection and fandom practice, defined as ‘probabilistic and elastic prosumption’ in a quasi-social and quasi-individual manner. We then critically examine and unpack the cultural production and meaning making process undertook by collectors who also accumulate sociality and form identity through affective and economic investments, mediated collection and exchange of figurines in a post-socialist and consumerist society. Read more at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20594364221140812
“Digital Silk Road” as a Slogan Instead of a Grand Strategy – Jinghan Zeng
Co-authored with Jing Cheng, Jinghan Zeng’s new article in the Journal of Contemporary China examines the rise of the Digital Silk Road within China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has produced sizeable political and academic analyses arguing that the Digital Silk Road is Beijing’s coherent top-down geopolitical—if not grand—strategy. This article challenges this view. By adopting a slogan politics approach, this article argues that the Digital Silk Road can be better understood as a vague political slogan. Far from a sophisticated top-level design, the rise of the Digital Silk Road was a result of economic and political struggles among domestic actors and the shifting socio-political landscape. This article also shows that Chinese domestic actors have (un)consciously interpreted the slogan of the Digital Silk Road in their preferred ways to advance their own agenda. Beyond nationwide support to echo the slogan, there is neither a coherent understanding nor a nationally concerted effort to advance a singular geopolitical objective, if there is any. Consequently, company-level interests and agendas, rather than a top-down geopolitical masterplan, have dominated the development of the Digital Silk Road. Read more at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10670564.2023.2222269
Authoritarian Foreign Policy Propaganda Campaigns: Four Birds With One Stone – Andrew Chubb
Research and analysis of authoritarian propaganda are likely to grow in importance and complexity in coming years. Why do authoritarian states sometimes play up dangerous international crises and embarrassing diplomatic incidents in domestic propaganda? Andrew Chubb’s latest piece, published in International Studies Quarterly in collaboration with Frances Yaping Wang of Colgate University, examines this question via an analysis of China’s puzzling propaganda campaign over the 2016 South China Sea arbitration case. The article uses this case, which China fully expected to lose, to illustrate how very different motivations – mobilization, signaling, diversion and pacification – can mutually reinforce each other to produce state-led popular nationalist outbursts that constitute a key element of the foreign policy of the most powerful authoritarian state the world has yet seen. Read the article open-access at: https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqad047
Outreach & Engagement
Hao Yang’s Chinese-language podcast《漫浪波》
LUCC Doctoral Fellow Hao Yang has launched a podcast (in Mandarin), exploring life, art and academia. A recent episode features a wide-ranging conversation between Hao and fellow LUCC members Xue Bai, Yuhong Lei and Andrew Chubb: https://www.xiaoyuzhoufm.com/episode/64216a9b8aca9099d76f8de3
Andrew Chubb on Taiwan scenarios and South China Sea nationalism
Amidst widespread speculation about potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, Andrew Chubb published commentaries examining lesser-known Taiwan scenarios at Project Syndicate, and on the implications for Southeast Asia at Fulcrum. Andrew also presented his research on the Rise of South China Sea Nationalism in China at Manchester China Institute in May (pictured above). A recording is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4dfDX_wCIo
Culture & Community
Chinese language and culture course for staff interested in engaging with China
The Confucius Institute at Lancaster University is running a 7 week in-person course for all staff interested in engaging with China. The course teaches basic language phrases and share some useful cultural practices. For more information see:
Teaching Lead position
The Lancaster University Confucius Institute is currently advertising for a fixed term maternity cover position from 1 September 2023 – 31 March 2024. The role is for Confucius Institute Teaching Lead and Senior Teaching Associate in Chinese (CI Core Teacher). For more information and to apply, please see:
https://hr-jobs.lancs.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=0656-23
Lancaster University China Centre
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