ANU China Seminar Series
The ANU China Seminar Series is the pre-eminent forum for discussion of China and the Sinophone world at the ANU. Speakers come from across the full range of disciplines. They include senior scholars, younger academics, and post-doctoral research fellows from in and outside the university. The Seminar Series is aimed at a broad audience: members of academic staff from many fields; undergraduate and graduate students; policy-makers; and interested members of the public are all welcome to attend. It acquaints people with a range of China-related research and offers a social setting for discussing matters of mutual interest.
The seminar usually runs between 4.00pm and 5.30pm on alternate Thursdays during the University’s teaching term. Exceptions will be noted on the Seminar Series’ website, which is regularly updated.
All attendees are invited to join us in the CIW Tea House from 3.30pm for informal discussion with the guest speaker before the seminar.
The Seminar Series is supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World at The Australian National University's College of Asia & the Pacific.
Latest Seminar Series Podcast
An International NGO’s 40 years in China
The Asia Foundation (TAF) has been programming in China since 1979. During this seminar, I will examine the Foundation’s experience in China over the past 40 years, including how our focus has evolved from overseas scholarships and sending English language science books to China in the early...
Although the ANU China Seminar Series runs by invitation only, the convenors welcome communication from those interested in presenting their research as part of its program.
Convenors
Benjamin Penny | Shuge Wei | Ivan Franceschini
Podcasts
With the consent of speakers, seminars are recorded and made publicly available through the Seminar Series’ website to build an archive of research on the Sinophone world. Listen to the podcasts
There are currently no upcoming events.
Xiong Shili 熊十力 and Cultural Nationalism in Modern China
Xiong Shili 熊十力 (1885-1968) was one of the most important Chinese philosophers of the twentieth century, and a founding figure of the modern New Confucian school of philosophy.
How did Paris-trained Cambodian intellectuals transform into hardened Maoist guerrillas?
This presentation explores the link between the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to globalize Maoism and the dialectical engagement of exported Maoism by intellectuals who became Maoists in Cambodia. It draws from Edward Said’s concept of “Traveling Theory,” which identifies conditions of production, transmission, and reception, to explain how Maoism emerged in Cambodian intellectual circles.
Sima Chengzhen 司馬承禎 and his Daoist sacred geography in the Tang Dynasty
In the late 720s and early 730s, the Tang emperor Xuanzong玄宗 (r.712-756) ordered the establishment of shrines on the Five Sacred Mountains for the Perfected Lord 五嶽真君祠.
[Online] All Under Heaven: How to stop worrying and learn to love brand China in the age of quarantine?
Culture went ‘viral’ in the face of crisis and has rapidly transformed the way audiences experience museums: from virtual tours, unique campaigns and series on social media to engagement in real-time with live streams.
[Online] Wishing and Worrying in Beijing and Taipei, 2019
This seminar is a kind of introduction to a new project that aims to use “religious” actions to produce information about what worries people in contemporary Beijing and Taipei.
An International NGO’s 40 years in China
[Online] ANU China Seminar Series: this seminar will be held online on Zoom
Two tigers on the same mountain: Sino-Japanese strategic bargains, 1400-1900
For socio-historical and geopolitical reasons, the deep alienation between China and Japan has long served to constrain the development of East Asia’s post-Cold War regional order. Drawing from a project investigating contemporary Japan-China strategic relations against the context of their long shared history, Goh asks whether, under what conditions, and how Japan and China might be able to construct peaceful and cooperative coexistence with each other.
Taiwan’s 2020 Elections in Retrospect: A National Security Referendum?
Taiwan held its quadrennial presidential and legislative elections in January 2020. Barely over a year ago, the incumbent President Tsai Ing-Wen’s Democratic Progressive Party suffered a crushing defeat at the mid-term local elections. The defeat, coupled with the threat posed by the immensely popular insurgent populist challenger in the KMT’s candidate, Han Kuo-Yu, once made the DPP’s 2020 prospects looked dire.
Korean research on the ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ (BRI)
This seminar examines research trends on the ‘Belt & Road Initiative’ (BRI) through the use of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and Co-word Network Analysis. Research on the BRI considers the complex interests of participating and neighbouring countries, and the way in which promotion of the BRI is related to political, economic and social issues in China. As a result, it is difficult to comprehensively understand trends in BRI research, and the countermeasures the BRI is generating in other countries.
China and the Global Refugee Crisis: Beyond Geopolitical Calculations
This paper explores the causes of China’s changing policies and behaviors related to refugees. Taking a different approach from the existing literature that focuses mainly on geopolitical factors to explain how China handles specific refugee crisis upon its borders, this paper reappraises the classic ‘two-level game’ framework in international relations and introduces two new lines of thinking on the topic.
