A new Oxford China Centre Conversation is now available to view (China Centre Conversation 1, Trinity Term 2022). The online conversation, ‘What can we learn from the past when trying to make sense of the Chinese Communist Party today?’, took place on 26 April 2022, and can be viewed here.
Todd Hall hosted the conversation with Jeffrey Wasserstrom (University of California, Irvine), Ian Johnson (The Council on Foreign Relations) and Diana Fu (University of Toronto)
British Association for Chinese Studies
University of Oxford
Co-hosted by Asian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA), and the Oxford China Centre.
31st August – 1st September 2022
BACS is pleased to announce that the 2022 Conference of the British Association of Chinese Studies will be held in-person at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.
Call for papers is now open! Come and meet friends and share your work!
Keynote Speakers
Frank Dikotter, Hong Kong University, China After Mao
This talk will present China after Mao, a book which uses hundreds of hitherto unseen documents from municipal and provincial archives in the People’s Republic to examine forty years of so-called “Reform and Opening Up”. The author will cover some of the key episodes in the story of China’s transformation from impoverished Maoist backwater into powerful Marxist-Leninist state.
Jieyu Liu, SOAS, Family Life in Urban China: A Three-Generation Portrait
This talk will draw upon over one hundred life history interviews with three urban generations of men and women to examine how continuities and changes in family life have been shaped by the wider political, socio-economic and demographic transformations since 1949. The portrait it paints offers a forceful alternative narrative to Western modernity theorists’ overly homogenized view of intimacy and family life.
The call for papers and panel proposals is now open!
To submit a proposal for a paper or a panel please send a word document to bacs@sant.ox.ac.uk
If you want to propose a paper, please put ‘PAPER’ in your email subject line. In your word document please give details of your name, email address and institutional affiliation (departmental and university). Please also state your paper title and provide a 250-word abstract.
If you want to propose a panel, please put ‘PANEL’ in your email subject line. In your word document please give the name, email address and institutional affiliation (departmental and university) of the organizer and each of the presenters. As panels are 90 minutes, it is recommended that panels have four presenters. Please include an abstract to describe the panel overall and then an abstract for each of the papers. Panels need to be diverse and inclusive.
Key dates
Expected conference fees (including catering, refreshments and conference dinner)
| BACS Members | Non-BACS-Members | |
| Student/Unwaged | £52 | £65 |
| Waged | £58 | £95 |
BACS members are eligible for a reduced conference registration fee.
A recording of the Baillie Gifford Distinguished Speaker talk, given by Robert B. Zoellick on 16 February 2022, is available here.
‘America and China in the World: How did we get here, and where should diplomacy go next?’
Relations between the US and China are at the tensest point for half a century. Can we look to history to understand why we have reached this point? In the next decade, global prosperity and peace will depend on this bilateral relationship being managed well. How likely are the prospects of that? In conversation with historian of China Rana Mitter, Robert B. Zoellick draws on his long experience of public service relating to China and his new book on US diplomacy to discuss these urgent issues.
Robert B. Zoellick has served as President of the World Bank (2007‒12), Deputy US Secretary of State (2005‒6), and US Trade Representative (2001‒5). He delivered the keynote speech in 2005 that called on China to act as a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in the global community. He is author of America in the World: A History of US Diplomacy and Foreign Policy (2020), which was recently published in paperback.
Enquiries: information@chinese.ox.ac.uk
Todd Hall discusses ‘Dispute Inflation: Making Sense of Conflict Dynamics in Maritime East Asia’ with the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program (C&WP). Recording is available here.
A new Oxford China Centre Conversation is now available to view. The online conversation, ‘What are we speaking about when we speak of China?’, took place on 26 January 2022, and can be viewed here
Biao Xiang (Max Planck Institute) hosted the conversation with Yangyang Cheng (Yale Law School) and Rachel Leow (University of Cambridge).
Henrietta Harrison’s profile, ‘Journeys in the East: Professor Henrietta Harrison and the hidden histories of China’ has been posted on the University of Oxford website.
Baillie Gifford Distinguished Speaker Series.
‘America and China in the World: How did we get here, and where should diplomacy go next?’
To attend this talk via Zoom, please register here
Enquiries: information@chinese.ox.ac.uk
Relations between the US and China are at the tensest point for half a century. Can we look to history to understand why we have reached this point? In the next decade, global prosperity and peace will depend on this bilateral relationship being managed well. How likely are the prospects of that? In conversation with historian of China Rana Mitter, Robert B. Zoellick will draw on his long experience of public service relating to China and his new book on US diplomacy to discuss these urgent issues.
Robert B. Zoellick has served as President of the World Bank (2007‒12), Deputy US Secretary of State (2005‒6), and US Trade Representative (2001‒5). He delivered the keynote speech in 2005 that called on China to act as a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in the global community. He is author of America in the World: A History of US Diplomacy and Foreign Policy (2020), which was recently published in paperback.
Vivienne Shue gave the keynote lecture, ‘Re-imagining China (and China Studies) in the Post Post-Cold War’, at a conference hosted by the Danish Institute for International Studies. The lecture can be seen here.
‘From the Cherwell to the Yangtze: The Oxford China Centre Alumni Podcast’, is a podcast where current Oxford Chinese studies undergraduates interview alumni of the China Centre to learn about where their relationship with Oxford and China has taken them since graduation.
We hope our podcasts will bring inspiration to prospective students thinking of applying for Chinese at Oxford one day, former alumni reminiscing about their days in Oxford and others interested in what opportunities studying Chinese in Oxford might bring.
Three podcasts are currently available here
