Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

Dear students and colleagues,

At the end of the winter term, our first IAAW Study Day will take place, to which we hereby cordially invite you. At the Study Day, research projects by students of our new MA program in Asian and African Studies will be presented and panel discussions on current academic debates and new book publications will be held.

For more details please click on the poster.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information or to share the study day information with interested students or colleagues!

Looking forward to seeing you at the event!

Your IAAW faculty team

You are cordially invited to participate in lecture #5 of the BCCN/LMRG's monthly online series “China – The New Science Superpower?”:

China’s Innovation System: Driving or Translating Global Technological Trends?

Speaker: Cong Cao, University of Nottingham

Online via Zoom. Please register for the event here:
https://zoom.us/j/95070450671?pwd=ME03aXhkclBuY1dsMms1a04vN1IzZz09

China’s achievement of the status as a rising global power in science, technology, and innovation represents the integration and synergy of its indigenous efforts and its taking advantage of the benefits offered by globalization. Such unique and exceptional features of the science and technology system have enabled China to embark on a distinct trajectory in science, technology, and innovation, as well as highlighting the challenges that the country has been facing in this regard, which have become more acute in light of its extraordinary characteristics of path dependence and the changing international environment.

Cong Cao is a professor in innovation studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.  His research focuses on science, technology, and innovation in China, including scientific elite; human resources in science and technology; research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in nanotechnology and biotechnology; and the governance of the science and technology system.  He is the author or co-author of four books and dozens of papers in leading international journals and edited volumes.  His research has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, European Union’s Framework Program 7, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, among other funders.

Spread the word and register for more lectures in this series on our BCCN-website

Dear students and colleagues,

The Lise Meitner Research Group at the MPIWG in collaboration with the BCCN invites you to the following hybrid lecture 

Dancing with Dragons: Higher Education, China and the Geopolitics of Global Science

Daniel Murphy (Harvard Kennedy School)

An evaluation of international scientific research partnerships that include China and leading research economies shows that China plays a critical role in global science, by some measures rivaling or even surpassing the United States both in the volume of scientific papers produced and the quality of the work as measured by citations.This trend of China’s scientific advancement has collided with hardening geopolitics that have caused some countries to re-think scientific collaboration with China. However, China’s central role in global science means that it occupies a vastly different space from Russia, which was recently excluded from much of global science because of its invasion of Ukraine. These trends have coincided with, according to survey data, scientists of Chinese descent at American universities experiencing greater discrimination and increased fear regarding their academic pursuits. Dan Murphy’s work explores what this means for higher education engagement with China. He argues for a rational approach that recognizes both the tremendous value of international academic collaboration and the need for firm boundaries around areas critical to national security.

Read more here: https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/event/dancing-dragons-higher-education-china-and-geopolitics-global-science  

Find Dan Murphy's latest study on the topic here: https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37372501 

Register for joining the event via Zoom here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIpcu-gqDwtGNR14eiakGcbRf3PoTkSf-0a  

If you would like to join the event in person, please come to the main conference room (ground floor, left side) at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), Boltzmannstrasse 22, 14195 Berlin. 

With best wishes, 

Anna Ahlers & Sarah Eaton

Dear students and colleagues,

We cordially invite you to join lecture #4 of the BCCN Online Lecture Series 2022/23 "China – The New Science Superpower?":

Practices as the Criterion of Truth: Ruptures and Continuities of Scientific Knowledge Discourses in 20th Century

Speaker: Marc Matten, Friedrich-Alexander Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg

Online via Zoom. Please register for the event here: https://zoom.us/j/99516596246?pwd=b0Y3akFwN3FEejRZUTFGZ3ZQNWg2UT09 

By looking at the formation of the public discourse of science and technology in the Mao-era this talk will highlight how the empowerment of workers and farmers in socialist China helped to shape a distinct vision of science and technology that was supposed to realize the goal of fast modernization with limited financial, human, and material resources. The strategy of the Communist Party-state to accommodate Western and local, "modern" and "traditional" knowledges in the fields of agricultural mechanization, steel production, and Chinese veterinary medicine brought forth new technologies. They were a result of the continuity of scientific thinking across the historical divides of 1949 and 1978.

Marc Andre Matten is the Professor for Contemporary Chinese History at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU). His research interests include, the history of knowledge transfers between Europe and China in the 20th century and the historiography of global history in contemporary China. His most recent publications are Knowledge Production in Mao-Era China—Learning from the Masses (Lexington, 2021, together with Rui Kunze), Moving Knowledge—The Soviet Union and China in the Twentieth Century (special issue of Comparativ, 2019, together with Julia Obertreis), as well as Imagining a Postnational World—Hegemony and Space in Modern China (Brill, 2016).


Spread the word and register for more lectures in this series on our BCCN-website