Raymond J. Davidson Jr. teaches at Trinity College Dublin and Rowan University. He is also a member of the ERC project Arabic Poetry in the Cairo Genizah based at Trinity in close collaboration with Cambridge University. Ray’s research interests are intercultural and comparative thought; social, political, and moral philosophy; gender and sexuality; literature and film as philosophical mediums; Asian Thought; American Pragmatism; environmental thought; and pedagogy.

Shigeki Nakagome (Trinity College Dublin) - A paleogenomic time travel to pre- and proto-historic Japan

Friday 21 October 2022, 12-1pm
Trinity Centre for Asian Studies, Arts Building Annex, Room 2012

  Where and how did modern Japanese populations originate? This intriguing question is now addressable by paleogenomics, in which DNA materials are recovered from archaeological specimens and sequenced for genomic analysis. This interdisciplinary approach has opened a new avenue to decoding thehuman past. While the Japanese archipelago has been occupied by humans for at least 38,000 years, its most radical cultural transformations have only occurred within the last 3,000 years, during which time its inhabitants quickly transitioned from foraging to widespread rice farming to a technologically advanced imperial state. However, the impact of agricultural and sociocultural changes on the genetic makeup of Japanese populations remains unclear. In this talk, Shigeki Nakagome will discuss the power and applicability of paleogenomics in untangling the genetic legacy of cultural transitions in Japan.

Shigeki Nakagome received his Ph.D. in Human Genetics at the University of Tokyo in 2010. As a postdoctoral researcher, he first joined The Institute of Statistical Mathematics from 2011 to 2013 and then moved to the University of Chicago to gain further postdoctoral training. Since 2016, he has been leading an independent research group at Trinity College Dublin. He has consolidated his position as a rising leader in the field of paleogenomics, gaining expertise in population genetics, statistical modelling, and functional genomics. He is recognized for his pioneering contributions to the development of statistical methods and the discovery of a novel model of the origins of modern Japanese populations.

The changing pronunciation of Chinese during the Han dynasty: applying graph theory to poetic rhymes

Friday 14 October, 10am-4pm:

Trinity Long Room Hub, Neill Lecture Theatre, Trinity College Dublin
Chinese is famous for its short simple words, its tones, and its simple grammar, but in the distant past Chinese was a very different language; Old Chinese (1300-100 BCE) lacked tones, had consonant clusters as impressive as those of German or Georgian, and it used prefixes and suffixes to form new words. By 602 CE, the date of the earliest Chinese pronunciation dictionary, Middle Chinese was already recognizably a form of the language we known today. How did Chinese change so much? The Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) holds the key; it was the first enduring empire in Chinese history, and among the most formative periods for Chinese thought and literature.
This one-day workshop will present the current results of ongoing research on Han dynasty poetry, using the digital humanities techniques of graph theory. These methods promise to unlock new insights into the history of Chinese pronunciation and adjudicate areas of current controversy.

10:00-10:15am - Welcome
10:15-11:00am - James Engels (SOAS), "The contribution of the Xiesheng hypothesis to competing theories of the Old Chinese vowel system" [remote presentation]
11:00-11:45am - Ash Henson (SOAS), "Using network theory for detecting rhyme communities in Han Dynasty rhyming texts"
11:45am-12:30pm - Nathan W. Hill (TCD), "The abstractions adequate to Chinese historical phonology"
12:30-1:30pm - Lunch
1:30-2:15pm - Julien Baley (Microsoft), "Evaluating rhyme annotations for large corpora: metrics and data"
2:15-3:00pm - Chris Foster (SOAS), "Evidence for final *-r in the Cang Jie pian and other primers"
3:00-3:45pm - Jeff Tharsen (Chicago) TBC [remote presentation]
3:45-4:00pm - Closing

Agata Karbowska (Jagiellonian University) - Sino-African Relations and the War in Ukraine

Wednesday 28 September 2022, 12-1pm

Trinity Centre for Asian Studies, Arts Building Annex, Room 2012

Most of the world has recently been focused on the events in Ukraine. Analysts and officials from the US and Europe have sharply criticized China's stance, but the view of African countries is quite different. Has China's stance on the Russo-Ukrainian war influenced and influenced the Africans? And do African governments find China's position confusing or contradictory, as some US and European analysts have complained? Some analysts have suggested that Beijing was seeking to strengthen international support for its stance on the war in Ukraine. Maybe, but this was not the main impetus for the latest series of bilateral meetings.

The 11th special session of the United Nations (2 March 2022) ended with a vote approving the non-binding Resolution 377A (V), which reaffirmed the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine and demanded immediate, total and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian armed forces from the territory of Ukraine. According to a Development Reimagined analysis, 51% of African countries voted in favor of the resolution, while the rest abstained or were absent. Eritrea was the only African country to vote against the resolution. While some have suggested that this inconsistent voice is due to the various existing ties between African countries and Russia – especially when it comes to mercenary soldiers – it is possible that China has influenced African views as well.

Recently, the Chinese authorities held a series of meetings with many African leaders. Some analysts interpret this as a desire to strengthen the Chinese position on the Russo-Ukrainian war. To better understand why the timing and content of these meetings, we must also at the priorities of African leaders in their engagement with China.

Agata Karbowska is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of the Middle and Far East at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, from which she received her Ph.D. in Political Science. She teaches slavery and colonialism in Africa and modern socio-political history of Africa. She has been granted scholarship by the Türkiye Scholarships Evaluation Committee and lectured at the University of İstanbul Şehir (Center for Modern Turkish Studies). She is author of a number of books and papers in sufism, political Islam, socio-political, religious and cultural problems in MENA. Currently focusing on Africa, especially political Islam in Sub-Saharian Africa.

Understanding the Constitution of Japan: comparison and analysis

Tuesday 30 August, 1:30-4:15pm:

Neil Lecture Theatre, Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin
Attendance is free. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Dr David Kenny <david.kenny@tcd.ie> at your earliest convenience.

The Constitution of Japan of 1947 is, perhaps, one of the world’s most interesting constitutions. Written during the Allied Occupation under the supervision of General Douglas MacArthur, it is widely approved of and respected in Japan, and is currently the oldest unamended constitution in the world.

Understanding the Japanese Constitution and its operation can be challenging for those not immersed in Japanese law and culture, due to language barriers and differences in outlook or approach. This seminar aims to make the Japanese Constitution, and its importance, clear to a broader audience. Featuring short talks from five of Japan’s leading constitutional scholars, it will look at several of the most interesting and distinctive features of the Japanese Constitution, and offer perspectives and reflection on areas of overlap and interest to Irish or western constitutional orders.

Hosted by the Trinity Centre for Constitutional Governance (TriCON) in association with the Long Room Hub, this seminar will be of interest to students, academics, and those with an interest in law, political science, Asian Studies, and more.  

Webinar: Isabella Weber (University of Massachusetts Amherst) - Price Controls versus Economic Warfare: Hyperinflation and the Communist Revolution

Friday 1 April, 12-1pm

Register here: https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcodOCurjkqHNb2h8s3KPs7Df_zK0i_5grU

Price stability is a major challenge during wartime. However, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. The success of strategies to cope with inflationary pressures that follow from financing war is dependent on the specific economic structures and channels of economic integration. Most economists initially rejected far-ranging price controls, but almost all belligerent powers in World War II ultimately reverted to wide-ranging price controls in pursuit of price stability. In the U.S. the Office of Price Administration implemented a complete price freeze and achieved high production growth at relatively stable prices in World War II compared with the First World War. Galbraith, a top American price administrator, theorised the success of price controls: in the highly concentrated industrial structure of the U.S. prices were not free even in the absence of state control. So, it was relatively easy to fix prices that are already fixed. For the same reasons that the price control policy worked in the U.S. it failed dramatically in China’s civil war when the Nationalists and their American advisors tried to replicate the success. China’s economy was largely agrarian with small scale producers and economic integration had splintered in the prolonged combats. Ultimately, the Communists succeeded in bringing hyperinflation down with so-called economic warfare, a strategy of commercial reintegration through the reestablishment of market links for essential goods and outspeculating the speculators by drawing together the resources of state commercial agencies to flood markets and reverse price spikes.

Isabella M. Weber is a political economist working on China, global trade and the history of economic thought. She is an Assistant Professor of Economics and the Research Leader for China of the Asian Political Economy Program at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Her first book How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate has received numerous prizes including the Joan Robinson Prize 2021 and the International Studies Association Best Interdisciplinary Book Award. For her work on the rise of economics in China’s recent history she has won the International Convention of Asia Scholars’ Ground-breaking Subject Matter Accolade and the Warren Samuels Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in History of Economic Thought and Methodology. Previously she was a Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was principal investigator of the ESRC-funded Rebuilding Macroeconomics project 'What Drives Specialization? A Century of Global Export Patterns.' Isabella holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the New School for Social Research, New York, and a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge.

Webinar: Rebecca E. Karl (New York University) - The Socialist Law of Value and the Rural Economy: Wang Yanan and Marxism in China, 1950s.

Friday 25 March, 12-1pm :

Register here:
https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMpc--opj4qH9InZR6lzyasQhD6DfROIz5t

If the Law of Value – as a proposition about how surplus gets extracted and distributed socially – is a law that pertains to capitalist economies, how did theorists in China in the early 1950s try to re-theorize a socialist law of value that was not about exploitation, alienation, and appropriation, but that was about social redistribution and the creation of an economy that could overcome the production of rural-urban unevenness and instead produce the conditions for an equitable socialist economics? The debates about the law of value were highly technical from 1953 onwards, and they became highly politicized as well through the Great Leap Forward. This paper intends to take seriously the attempt to theorize a socialist economics, and in particular the question of rural extraction for urban industrialization, through the (unsuccessful) attempts to transcend the capitalist law of value in 1950s China. The Marxist philosopher, Wang Yanan, was at the center of these debates.

Rebecca E. Karl is a Professor of History at New York University. An author and co-editor of many books, her most recent is China's Revolutions in the Modern World: A Brief Interpretive History (Verso 2020). She is co-founder of Critical China Scholars (criticalchinascholars.org) and co-editor in the positionspolitics.org collective.

Webinar: Edwin Michielsen (University of Toronto) - Celebrating the Proletariat: May Day Strikes and Syntheses of Solidarity

Friday 4 March 2022, 12-1pm

Register here: https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAsfu2qrjwpG9ZCHWX2-yWw5W63WiiSZr9L 

In the talk, I will present my doctoral research that examines the theories and practices of proletarian international solidarity during the 1920s and 1930s in East Asia. Locating its arguments in concurrent proletarian theories of labor, linguistics, gender, and war as well as literary and art criticism, my dissertation argues that such theoretico-practical manifestations of solidarity did not merely follow a party and union allegiance based on unidirectional and monolithic forms of organization, but were assembled in constant-changing and multi-directional alliances.

To Illustrate the above, I will discuss praxes of assembling solidarity found in the intermedial cultural and literary production surrounding May Day, the International Workers’ Day. Celebrating the intimate relationships between political struggles through mass strikes and demonstrations against imperial capitalist oppression worldwide, proletarian writers and artists aimed to weave together innumerable spatial experiences into cohesive proletarian spacetimes. Proletarian artists stitched spatial gaps between proletarian sites of resistance through photographic collages and filmic montages, while simultaneously historicizing and critiquing the production of unevenness among these sites. May Day photographs, films, plays, and songs created through juxtaposition and adjacency a pastiche of proletarian resistance and struggles, synthesizing parts of social and material realities aimed to exceed the realm of artistic production by exercising among participants a mental perception and constitution of an interconnected and multifaceted world. Such attempts also found voice in literary practices. Murayama Tomoyoshi’s play Shōri no kiroku (Record of Victory, 1931) presents a narrative showing how proletarians in Shanghai try to form alliances for the celebration of May Day to overcome divisions in their resistance against imperial capitalism while situating their local struggles within the context of proletarian struggles worldwide.

Edwin Michielsen received his BA and MA in Japanese Studies from Leiden University and his PhD in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto in 2021. His dissertation “Assembling Solidarity: Proletarian Arts and Internationalism in East Asia” examines a literary and cultural history of proletarian arts across East Asia during the 1920s and 1930s and their investment in international solidarity. He is currently a course instructor at the University of Toronto, where he teaches courses in East Asian literature and history.

Webinar: Viren Murthy (University of Wisconsin Madison) - Back to the Future: Reflections on Tamil Marxism, Anti-Colonial Nationalism and Identity Politics .

Friday 25 Feb, 4.30-5.30pm :

Register here:
https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUtcu6gpjsoH9b8IBnaGNqaMSikFFyANZSt

Marxism in Tamil Nadu emerged in a concrete context, where authors and activists constantly argued about the relationship between caste and class. In this presentation, I emphasize how a recent discussion in Tamil Marxism converges with a global problematic concerning a politics of time and different understandings of capitalism. The Marxists I will examine here, N. Muthumogan and N. Gunasekaran are both affiliated with the Communist Party India-Marxist (CPIM) and are prolific in print and on the internet. In 2010, Muthumogan wrote an essay entitled “Peasant India and Communists,” which was originally a lecture delivered at conference celebrating the 85th anniversary of the Indian Communist Party and the essay was eventually published in January, 2011 in a journal called, “Our Library (ungal nuulagam).” In this essay, Muthumogan argued for an alliance between Tamil identity, Dalit identity and a class-based movement against capitalism. Against this, N. Gunasekaran wrote a series of rebuttals arguing that identity politics runs fundamentally counter to the Marxist project. He contends that “the perspective of identity politics is narrow and therefore one cannot construct a class politics on this base.” This debate overlaps with an opposition Marxism between those engage in a politics of tradition, identity and time and those who argue that any type of identity politics reproduces capitalism and more specifically neo-liberalism. I contend that we can situate the above-mentioned debate in relation to Marxists stress the dominance of the value form, who downplay the relevance of anti-imperialist or Third World Marxism and those who emphasize the incompleteness of capitalist subsumption. Muthumogan draws on arguments similar to those who stress the formal or incomplete subsumption of capital to highlight the continuing relevance of Tamil traditions for socialism. 

Viren Murthy is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned his Ph.D. in 2007 at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Political Philosophy of Zhang Taiyan: The Resistance of Consciousness (Brill, 2011) and has published articles on Chinese and Japanese intellectual history in Modern Intellectual History, Modern China, and elsewhere. He has a forthcoming book entitled, The Politics of Time in China and Japan: Back to the Future (Routledge, 2022) and he is currently completing a monograph tentatively entitled Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolutions, which examines how philosophies of resistance intersect with visions of transnational identity and hopes for an alternative future. 

Webinar: Li Shang (Swansea University) - A fresh look at Marx's understanding of the Asiatic mode of production

Friday 4 February 2022, 12-1pm

Registration:https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYuceGtqTovHdy_MpD6a34ofuSL7YR0mrjF

The validity and implication of the Asiatic mode of production [AMP] has become one of the most controversial issues in Marxist theory since Marx mentioned this concept. A huge space for understanding and misunderstanding is bequeathed by Marx’s oeuvre because he never systematically elaborated on it in his published work. Based on a close reading of Marx’s texts and their contemporary interpretations, the possibility of understanding the mode of production in terms of property relations could be achieved by clarifying the two-fold character of property; the validity of the AMP could be demonstrated by decomposing historical modes of production into two dimensions; its implications and its historical geography could be clarified and located by distinguishing it from other modes of production.

Shang Li is a PhD candidate in Department of Geography, Swansea University. He is interested in classical Marxism and Marxist geography. He has submitted his thesis, entitled Reorienting Historical-geographical Materialism: A Critique of Geopolitical Economy, in September 2021.

Dr Yushu Geng, 'From Wise Mother/Good Wife to Tiger Mom: women in 20th century China'.

Tuesday 1 February 2022, 6pm:

More information and to register:
https://www.dublinlunarnewyear.ie/events/category/talks-seminars/from-wise-mother-good-wife-to-tiger-mom-women-in-20th-century-china/

The term ‘tiger mom’, coined by Chinese-American law scholar Amy Chua in her 2011 memoir to describe Chinese moms who practised strict parenting to ensure their children’s success, sometimes at the expense of their social and emotional development, quickly gained global popularity. Despite this concept’s deep roots in Confucianism and Chinese culture, Chinese moms had not always been tiger moms. How was motherhood viewed in China in the past? How did the transformation of an imperial dynasty to a Republic, then to a communist state, and finally to ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ affect women and mothers in 20th century China? In this talk, Dr Yushu Geng will explore the changing notions of ideal womanhood and motherhood in China’s long twentieth century.

Yushu Geng is a historian of modern China with a particular focus on women and gender. Prior to working at Trinity College Dublin as a postdoctoral researcher, she studied at Durham University and University of Cambridge. 

Webinar: Professor Nathan Hill, 'The word for 'tiger' in Chinese and other Asian languages'.  

Monday 31 January 2022, 6pm

For more info and to register:
https://www.dublinlunarnewyear.ie/events/category/talks-seminars/the-word-for-tiger-in-chinese-and-other-asian-languages/

This talk will explore the history of the Chinese word 虎 hú ‘tiger’. I will first explain the reasoning that leads some scholars to reconstruct *qʰˤraʔ as the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046 BC – 256 BC) pronunciation of this word. I will then consider evidence that the word started with a t- and possible connections to the Tibetan word stag ‘tiger’ and the Japanese word tora ‘tiger’.

Nathan W. Hill is Sam Lam Professor in Chinese Studies and as the new Director of the Trinity Centre for Asian Studies. His research focusses on Tibeto-Burman/Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics. His books include The Historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese (2019, Cambridge), A Lexicon of Tibetan Verb Stems as Reported by the Grammatical Tradition (2010, Bavarian Academy of Sciences), and Old Tibetan Inscriptions, co-authored with Kazushi Iwao (2009, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies).

Dr Dong Jin Kim, 'Global Health Diplomacy and North Korea: Ending the Quarantine of Humanitarianism in 2022'.

Friday 28 January, 6pm:

More information and to register:
https://www.dublinlunarnewyear.ie/events/category/talks-seminars/global-health-diplomacy-and-north-korea-ending-the-quarantine-of-humanitarianism-in-2022/

If states formulate their foreign policy based on national interest, when is humanitarianism towards people outside their jurisdiction justified? As captured in the phrase, ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’, the COVID-19 era is the time to end the quarantine of humanitarian action from international politics. This talk explores how global health diplomacy, including the provision of COVID-19 vaccines for the vulnerable population in North Korea, would be in the enlightened self-interest of donor countries, as well as a global responsibility.

Dong Jin is Irish School of Ecumenics Senior Research Fellow in Peace and Reconciliation Studies, Trinity College Dublin. His research interests are in the area of peacebuilding, humanitarian and development cooperation, and comparative studies of peace processes. He is also a Goodwill Ambassador for Peace on the Korean Peninsula at the South Korean Government Ministry of Unification, and a policy advisor for the Korean humanitarian and peace NGOs; the Korean Sharing Movement (KSM), and Okedongmu Children in Korea (OKCK).

Webinar: Alexander Statman - Ancient Wisdom and Unhistorical History: Hegel's Encounter with Chinese Philosophy

Thursday 27 January 2022, 6-7pm

Registration:
https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ldu2uqzgjEtdljIKB7ioU6x6GwACKGw5E

At the end of the Enlightenment, European engagement with China underwent a fundamental transformation. For the philosophers of the eighteenth century, Chinese thought had been defined by what they took to be a Confucian philosophy of reason and an illustrious ancient past. But for Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, China was instead characterized by the doctrines of Daoism: what he called a “religion of magic” and a relic of "unhistorical history." How did this remarkable change take place?

In this talk, I explore the contexts and consequences of Hegel’s engagement with Chinese philosophy. He first encountered it through an essay by the ex-Jesuit missionary Joseph-Marie Amiot that had been published in 1791, then expanded his interpretation in the 1820s with the work of Europe’s first professional Sinologist, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat. In 1827, the two scholars met in Paris to consider the question: “Has there been or has there not been philosophy in the Orient?” Their conversation reframed ancient wisdom for modern Orientalism and philosophy alike.

Alexander Statman is a historian of science and intellectual historian. He completed his PhD at Stanford University and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Huntington Library and University of Wisconsin-Madison. His book, A Global Enlightenment: Western Progress and Chinese Science, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press.

Webinar: Gerald Roche (La Trobe University) - Language Oppression in China: What Does it Look Like?

Friday 26 November, noon-1pm

Register here:
https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtdeitpzwpHtFMBM1Q7Qalt5lfDznsQXot

Language oppression refers to coerced language shift that, if left unchecked, leads to the elimination of entire languages. This typically involves the eradication of minority and Indigenous languages in the context of the state’s promotion of dominant languages. In this presentation, I will discuss language oppression in the People’s Republic of China, drawing on new empirical evidence and recent theoretical developments. Empirically, I will draw on my own research with speakers of minoritized languages in the Tibetan regions of China, demonstrating how language oppression is discernible in the widespread collapse of the inter-generational transmission of languages, and shift towards the use and transmission of dominant languages. This evidence will be supported with case studies from other contexts in China, including Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. Theoretically, I will draw on developments in genocide studies, to explore why it is often difficult to perceive language oppression, and to convince public audiences that language oppression is occurring. In particular, I will draw on an approach within genocide studies that historian Dirk Moses refers to as a ‘post-liberal’ approach. Post-liberal approaches have expanded the focus of genocide studies beyond a narrow emphasis on explicit intent and mass killing, to examine various forms of structural violence that lead to the destruction of groups. Drawing on these post-liberal approaches to genocide enables us to understand how language oppression often takes place in the absence of spectacular violence or explicit statements of eliminatory intent, and draws our attention towards invisible structures and slow-moving processes that can only be rendered visible through concerted analytical effort. In concluding the presentation, I will argue that undertaking this analytical work is important because language oppression often has consequences far beyond the ‘loss’ of a medium of communication or the destruction of language-based identities. These consequences include physical harm and bodily death, and demonstrate how connections between language oppression and genocide are more than theoretical.

Gerald Roche is an anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe University. His research examines the intersections of language, race and colonialism with a regional focus on Tibet and the Himalayas. He edited the Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization and his articles have appeared in American Anthropologist, Patterns of Prejudice, China Quarterly, Territory, Politics, Governance and other journals.

Webinar: James Leibold (La Trobe University) - Taming Mongolia: Xi Jinping’s Agenda for Coercive Nation Building in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region

Friday 19 November, 11am-noon

Registration:https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUrdeCqpzsoE9DWrEKuBIVND5SMB2YVbH1k

Inner Mongolia has long been considered the “model autonomous region” by Chinese Communist Party leaders. Its first Chairman Ulanhu played a crucial role in designing and implementing the Party’s “first generation” of progressive nationality policies, only to be purged during the Cultural Revolution. During the 1980s he was rehabilitated and together with his son Buhe helped to draft the 1984 Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy that re-established and strengthened these policies. Yet, over the last decade there have been calls for a “second generation” of ethnic policies that emphasis collective national belonging over ethnic peculiarities. Inner Mongolia is once again a frontier of contestation over Xi Jinping’s new agenda to “forge the collective consciousness of the Zhonghua nation/race” through more assertive and coercive nation-building policies. In this talk, Professor Leibold will provide an overview of the battle for Inner Mongolia, and the Party-state’s concerted efforts to tame and transformation the region since 2012.

James Leibold is a Professor and Head of the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra where he current leads the Xinjiang Data Project.

Webinar: Qi Zhang (Dublin City University) - The trilingual education for ethnic minorities: field studies of the Tujia, the Uyghurs and the Inner Mongolian

Friday 12 November, noon-1pm

Register here:
https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUpc--urD0sHtKMRKbuVlq0vQSUWPXkIuu9

The term ‘bilingual education’ is used in various official documents in the People’s Republic of China regarding language policies and practices for minority groups in China. In practice, the reality is trilingual education in this globalizing world: the minority language used in the family environment, Putonghua as the national common language, and English as the widely employed lingua franca around the world.

This study examines how three languages operate for three minority groups – the Tujia, the Uyghur, and the Inner Mongolian – based on three field studies. In comparison with eastern coastal cities in China, the regions where these minorities are found are less urbanized or less developed rural areas. The Tujia and the Mongols have been largely integrated with Han Chinese, whereas the Uyghur show a lower level of integration. Both urban-rural division and ethnolinguistic vitality are taken into account in examining the experience of trilingual education for these three ethnic minorities. The examination of the co-deployment of Putonghua, minority languages, and Englishes focuses on two aspects: medium of instruction and language attitudes. Official documents, especially the Outline of Mid- and Long-term Educational Reforms and Development Plan (2010-2020), are discussed along with local implementation and the experience of teachers and students, to provide a full picture of trilingual education for these ethnic minorities in China.

Dr Qi Zhang is an assistant professor in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University. She has a BA in Chinese Language and Literature from Sun Yat-sen University in China, an MA in Translation from Durham University and a PhD in Linguistics from Newcastle University. Her recent research interests are primarily in the field of Chinese language education, including applied Chinese linguistics, language attitudes and pedagogy, and Chinese language study among ethnic minorities in China. She has published over twenty articles in peer reviewed journals, such as Asian Ethnicity, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, and Language Learning Journal.

Webinar: Naomi Yamada (Meiji) - Changing approaches to positive discrimination in education in China.

Friday 5 November, noon-1pm

Registration:
https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEkd-msrzMrGdYqgi35tPCd7O2Jcyyl5Fil

China’s so-called “preferential” education policies are often compared to affirmative action in the United States. And like affirmative action policies, they have been subject to criticism and to changes in implementation. The policy measures include the national system of college preparatory classes for ethnic minorities, and, controversially, point provisions on the gaokao. During my ethnographic research in Qinghai province—home to Tibetans, Chinese Muslims, Han, and Mongolians—I found that these measures had long been viewed as crucial to managing ethnic-based contradictions. The Xi-Li administration has rather emphasized unification through linguistic and curricular standardization. Consequently, reductions in point provisions and elimination of categories of eligibility have affected peoples as diverse as Koreans in Jilin to Uyghurs in Xinjiang. This talk provides an overview of the preferential policy measures and of their logic—concerning both their enactment and retraction

Naomi Yamada is a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Island Studies at Meiji University in Tokyo. She is the author of Preferential Education Policies in Multi-Ethnic China: National Rhetoric, Local Realities (Routledge, 2020). She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and has lived and worked in Xining (Qinghai province, PRC).

Wenyu Du (Beihang) -- AI-enabled digital transformation and innovation in China.

20th Oct 12:00 -13:00

Register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pdequpj0uHtAjvUAIH1-gaTjUVY6wv-d_

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are transforming many industries in China. More and more companies are using AI as a strategic tool to launch new products, services, and business models. This talk will cover the topic of AI-enabled digital transformation and innovation in China. It has two parts. First, the speaker will explain the landscape of the AI industry in China, which includes the market size, policies, key stakeholders, and industrial clusters. It will also include some popular use cases in the context of marketing and customer engagement. In the second part, the speaker will provide an in-depth case study on ByteDance. The case will illustrate how ByteDance builds an AI-centric infrastructure that enables it to outperform competitors and become one of the most valuable startups in the world.

Wenyu (Derek) Du is an associate professor of the Information Systems Department at the School of Economics and Management, Beihang University, Beijing, China. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Information Systems Department, National University of Singapore. His research interests include blockchain/ Fintech, digital innovation, and IT outsourcing. He uses qualitative case studies as his research methodology. His work has been published at Journal of Information Technology, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information & Management, International Journal of Information Management, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and MIS Quarterly Executive.

Webinar: Lin Boqiang (Xiamen University) -- Evolution of China's Energy Policy.

Thursday 14th October, 12pm

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvc-Cpqj4oH9MqvaJkHE38Dx65pxLWk-LY

Abstract: The main difficulties of carbon neutralization in China includes: 1. the economy still needs substantial growth; 2. high carbon content in term of resource endowment and energy supply structure (coal about 60%); 3. high industrial energy consumption (70%); 4. consumers have low ability to pay for carbon cost; 5. slow energy pricing reforms. Environmental protection and carbon emissions reduction are important parts of China’s high-quality growth. The focus of transition is changing energy supply structure: building an energy system with clean electricity as the main sources of supply. At present, China has one of the largest and possibly most effective energy systems in the world, about 85% of which are fossil energy. In the future, wind and solar will be the main growing forces. Energy supply safety, system stability and sufficient supply are the basic principles of clean transition and also the main challenges. Carbon neutralization should be a forced mechanism for transition; energy, environment and economic growth need systematic consideration and a systematic transformation plan. Systematic transformation plan: an energy system with clean electricity as main supply and can reflecting supply costs. This requires: changing consumer behaviors, promoting industrial structure adjustments, advocating circular economy, Improving system efficiency through digitization and smart grid.

Lin Boqiang obtained his Ph.D in economics from University of California at Santa Barbara. He is a “Chang Jiang Scholar” Professor, Dean of China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy and Director for Collaborative Innovation Center for Energy Economics and Energy Policy at Xiamen University; Editor of Energy Economics journal; Vice Chairman of China Energy Society; Member of National Energy Consultation Committee under National Energy Commission; Member of National Energy Price Consultation Committee under National Development and Reform Commission; Non-executive Member of Board of Directors and Chairman of Audit Committee of China National Petroleum Corporation; and Guest Commentator for China National Radio. He is currently also a member of Board of Stewards of Future of Energy of the World Economic Forum based in Davos Switzerland.

Webinar: Linda Tsung (Sydney) - Multi-model approaches in multilingual education in China.

Friday 8 October, noon-1pm

China is one of the most multilingual countries in the world. The government of the People’s Republic of China promotes the country as a harmonious and unified nation with 56 distinct ethnic groups who speak more than 400 languages. The government has not only legally recognized multilingualism but also publicly encourages a climate in which the using and learning of a variety of languages can flourish. Adopting theories of language ecology and human capital, this talk explores multi-model approaches in multilingual education (ME) and minority language (ML) maintenance in China. In doing so, it provides insights into our understanding of national ME implementation and ML maintenance.

This paper is based on extensive empirical research and case studies in China’s multilingual regions and provinces. It examines the application of the Chinese government’s ME and ML practices over the last 30 years with its underlying language ideology and practices, revealing de factor language policies. In doing so, it analyses language management at school levels, the linguistic landscape around minority areas and the language attitudes and cultural identities held by present minority students, teachers and parents. The implementation of ME in China is under great challenge: ML maintenance is not static and its movement in one direction or another at macro or micro levels is a result of many influences that require careful consideration.

Register here:
https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIrc-CrqDktHdHbQWkUBNdEXLHvpdBLQbJb

Webinar: Julia C. Schneider (Cork) - Who belongs to the Chinese nation? Inclusion and exclusion in Chinese Republican historiography.

Friday 1 October, noon-1pm

In my lecture, I analyse the formation of the theory of Chinese assimilative power in the first half of the twentieth century, bringing the intimate relation between Chinese historiography and nationalism to the fore. The cohesion between nationalist agendas and constructions of history is particularly revealed in general histories, in which non-Chinese peoples were constructed as “people without history” and at the same time integrated into the Chinese nation by means of Agamben’s “inclusive exclusion.” By studying more than a dozen general histories, I show how non-Chinese peoples were marginalised by republican Chinese historians who ultimately imagined the Chinese nation and its history as homogenous. A pattern reveals itself that explains how the assimilation theory became to be applied in historiography and why this theory has been crucial for Chinese nation-building.

Julia C. Schneider is Lecturer in Chinese history at the Department of Asian Studies at University College Cork. She holds a joint PhD in Sinology from Ghent and Göttingen Universities and an MA in Classical Sinology from Heidelberg University. From 2014 to 2019, she was Assistant Professor at the Department of East Asian Studies, Göttingen University. Her book Nation and Ethnicity, published in 2017 by Brill, won the Foundation Council Award of Göttingen University. Her research interests are historiography, history of ideas, and ethnohistory in Qing and Republican times as well as Jurchen and Manchu studies. She has published in journals such as Journal of Asian History and Global Intellectual History.

Register here:
https://tcd-ie.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYkd-CpqDwuGN1zc3Ticv41ZJTPUsATN_Eu

Political Implications of Ireland’s Deepening Economic Relationship with China, Wednesday 9 June 2021 at 2pm (9am EST, 9pm HKT). Co-hosted with The Wilson Center, Washington DC.

Panelists include:

Jamil Anderlini – Asia Editor, The Financial Times
Finbarr Bermingham – Europe Correspondent, South China Morning Post
Tim Mawe – Regional Director, Asia Pacific, Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Yvonne Murray – Journalist, RTÉ

Economic relations between Ireland and China have expanded in recent years. Chinese investment in Ireland jumped by 56% in 2019, even as it fell in Europe as a whole. The value of Irish exports to China grew from less than $4 billion in 2016 to $11.25 billion in 2020. For Ireland, China presents an opportunity to diversify trade and investment at a critical time for Irish businesses. For China, Ireland is a gateway to the European market and, following Brexit, the only EU country other than Malta with English as an official language. As a business and tech hub, Ireland is an attractive place for Chinese firms to headquarter. While the economic benefits for Ireland of closer ties with China are obvious, the political implications are less clear. The relationship is not developing in a vacuum, but in the context of a shift in relations between Europe, the US, and China. Ireland must reckon with how it views its role in this evolving environment. Please join us for a look at the reckoning process.

Register here:
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_K2iVIANMTXWBx8AnJdDv6g

Julien Baley (Microsoft), "Networks as a tool for the study of Chinese Rhymes - Friday 16 April, 12-1pm.

This talk explores the question of how the study of rhyme can help the historical linguist’s work in sketching the phonological system of a language. Through the use of computational techniques – representing rhymes as network graphs and detecting communities of rhymes in those graphs – I take an empirical approach and harness a corpus of Chinese poetry that spans six centuries and contains a quarter of a million of poems, and highlight rhyming practices that evolved as the phonology of the Chinese language changed.

After a brief recap of the theoretical concepts (rhymes, graphs, communities), the study dives in a series of case studies designed to highlight and evaluate specific aspects of the proposed method: how it works, what are its strengths and weaknesses. In the process, I demonstrate the approach’s ability to detect and date specific instances of language change.

Anti-China Now and Then: Anti-Chinese Racism and the Liberal Tradition 1776-2021
Professor Kiri Paramore (UCC)
TCAS Lunchtime Seminar, Friday 12 March, 12-1pm.

This presentation analyses the links between anti-Chinese racism and liberal political thought. Starting in 1776, we begin with a short overview of the role of anti-Chinese sentiment in the formation and development of the liberal tradition – focusing on the central role of images of “Asian despotism” and “timeless Asia” in defining the Orientalist ideologies of nineteenth and twentieth century Western imperialism. Professor Paramore then moves on to discuss our current situation in 2021, using liberalism and anti-Chinese racism’s long interwoven history to explain the prominent return of anti-Chinese racism in our times.

A Good Year to Found a Republic: The Year of the Ox, 1949
In Association with the Dublin Chinese Lunar New Year festival
6 pm, Thursday 11 February 2021

The year 1949, when both Ireland and China established new republics, was a year of the ox, associated with strength and hard work. Projecting strength was a priority for China as it overthrew the shackles of foreign colonialism, at the same time as Ireland formally disengaged from its former colonial ruler. Building a strong economy would take time and hard work, as China launched a period of state capitalism while capitalists fled from the mainland to Hong Kong. At the same time, a programme to spread literacy and national unity through simplifying and standardising Chinese fundamentally changed the language. This special panel event from the Trinity Centre for Asian Studies explores these three facets of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Dr Isabella Jackson: "The Chinese people have stood up!" Anti-imperialism and the founding of the People's Republic
Dr Peter Hamilton: A Strong Economy for a Strong Nation: Early State Capitalism in the People's Republic
Dr Ning Jiang: New China, New Chinese language: standardising and simplifying Chinese in the new People's Republic
Professor Nathan Hill: Chair

Faculty in Focus with Dr. Peter Hamilton, 1 pm, Tuesday 9 February.

An 'in conversation' with Dr Peter Hamilton (School of Histories and Humanities) and hosted by Dr Isabella Jackson, (Trinity Centre for Asian Studies) Dr Hamilton will discuss his career and his latest publication, Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization.

About Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization
Between 1949 and 1997, Hong Kong transformed from a struggling British colonial outpost into a global financial capital. Made in Hong Kong delivers a new narrative of this metamorphosis, revealing Hong Kong both as a critical engine in the expansion and remaking of postwar global capitalism and as the linchpin of Sino-U.S. trade since the 1970s.

Peter E. Hamilton explores the role of an overlooked transnational Chinese elite who fled to Hong Kong amid war and revolution. Despite losing material possessions, these industrialists, bankers, academics, and other professionals retained crucial connections to the United States. They used these relationships to enmesh themselves and Hong Kong with the U.S. through commercial ties and higher education. By the 1960s, Hong Kong had become a manufacturing powerhouse supplying American consumers, and by the 1970s it was the world’s largest sender of foreign students to American colleges and universities. Hong Kong’s reorientation toward U.S. international leadership enabled its transplanted Chinese elites to benefit from expanding American influence in Asia and positioned them to act as shepherds to China’s reengagement with global capitalism. After China’s reforms accelerated under Deng Xiaoping, Hong Kong became a crucial node for China’s export-driven development, connecting Chinese labour with the U.S. market.

Analysing untapped archival sources from around the world, this book demonstrates why we cannot understand postwar globalization, China’s economic rise, or today’s Sino-U.S. trade relationship without centring Hong Kong.

Dr. Peter E. Hamilton is the Assistant Professor in Modern Chinese History at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of Made in Hong Kong: Transpacific Networks and a New History of Globalization (Columbia University Press, Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, 2021). His research has been published in Twentieth-Century China, The Journal of Historical Sociology, and The International History Review and has received financial support from the Fudan Development Institute, the Schwarzman Scholars, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University, the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Hong Kong-America Centre.

TCAS Lunchtime Seminar, 12 pm, Friday 20 November. Disaster nationalism in the digital age: reimagining the (inter)national community through pandemic narratives in China. Dr Chenchen Zhang, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, the Queen’s University of Belfast.

Disasters and crises create disruptions and insecurities that potentially both threaten and reinforce the existing political order. The COVID-19 crisis in China that unfolded in the spring of 2020 represents what Edkins calls a “trauma time”, the disruptive nature of which urges the state to move quickly to “put in place as fast as possible a linear narrative of origins” (Edkins 2006: 107). This talk will examine how such linear narratives of grief, solidarity, and heroism are produced to nationalize the collective memory of trauma time and monopolize the ways in which life is grievable. On the other hand, it will also show how alternative expressions of grief, rage, and critical solidarity challenge the official script of disaster nationalism in the digital space.

TCAS Lunchtime Seminar, 12 pm, Friday 27 November. A Ticking Bomb: Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis. Dr Rahul Mishra, Senior Lecturer at the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

After decades of oppressive rule by the military junta, Myanmar (Burma) made a transition to democracy in 2015. The international community and the people of Myanmar had pinned their hopes on Aung San Suu Kyi, a noble laureate and the icon of decades-old democratic struggle in Myanmar, as the leader of a ‘New Myanmar’. With the landslide election victory of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), it was expected that she would bring nationwide peace, harmony, and economic development. However, the systemic and decades-old persecution of ethnic minorities in a Bamar-dominated Myanmar continued unabated. Termed the “world’s most persecuted minority”, Rohingya are considered illegal inhabitants in their own country by the Myanmar government, as they have been denied citizenship under the 1982 Citizenship Law. Lack of access to basic human facilities, civil and political rights, and endless persecution at the hands of the Tatmadaw (Myanmar armed forces) and the government have led to waves of exodus of the Rohingya to Bangladesh and neighbouring Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia. It is the largest human exodus in Asia since the Vietnam War. The United Nations and the International Court of Justice have termed their persecution possible “crimes against humanity”. This talk highlights various aspects of the state-supported persecution of the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities in Myanmar and suggests ways in which the international community could intervene to stop the ongoing violation of human rights.

Rahul Mishra is a Senior Lecturer at the Asia-Europe Institute, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Prior to this, he was a Consultant with the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Dr Mishra specialises on politico-security affairs of the Southeast Asian region, and major power politics in Asia. His latest publications include India’s Eastward Engagement from Antiquity to Act East Policy (Co-authored with Prof. S.D. Muni, SAGE Publications, 2019) and Asia and Europe in the 21st Century: New Anxieties, New Concerns (Co-edited with Azirah Hashim and Tony Milner, Routledge, 2020).

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