Upcoming Events

6-7th Nov 2025
Birmingham City University
Deadline (Abstracts): 18th Apr 2025

With the rise of Chinese digital platforms and social media, a new landscape of visual cultural production and artistic communication has emerged, reshaping the ways of art making and aesthetics, the cultures and politics of display, and stimulating new participatory approaches in diversity. From the early days of bulletin board systems (BBS) like ‘Shui Mu Tsing Hua’ (1995) to the proliferation of platforms like WeChat (2011), Douyin (2016)/TikTok (2017), Kuaishou (2011), Weibo (2009), QQ (1999), and Xiaohongshu (Rednote) (2013), Chinese social media have become a vital site for artistic expression, community engagement, and political discourse. The development of social media entangled with critical issues of gender, LGBTQ+, ethnicity, and identities has broadened the boundaries of existing concepts of contemporary art and visual culture, providing new methods, conditions and aesthetics.

The rapidly evolving social media with ‘Chinese characteristics’ has facilitated a wave of contemporary Chinese art and visual culture in various forms with key representations including Zhang Peili, Miao Ying, Cao Fei, Ge Yulu, Lin Ke, Jiao Xingtao, Huang Sunquan, and many others.… Read more ⤻

26-27th Jul 2025
Deadline: 15th Apr 2025

The “Iserlohner Kreis” is a loose circle of young social scientists working on China. Our annual workshop will be held from 26 to 27 July 2025 at Haus Villigst in Schwerte, Germany. This year, our discussion will centre on new research topics and challenges in Chinese Studies.

The workshop aims at young scholars looking to discuss their master’s theses, dissertations and habilitations as well as their completed or ongoing research projects, applications and academic articles in an informal setting. Beyond social science research on the Sinophone world, we also particularly welcome interdisciplinary work. Participants may present thematic trends and new findings from their own projects, their work on theoretical categorisations and practical methodology as well as related challenges. The workshop is intended as a platform for specific problems and receiving constructive peer feedback.

Leuven, Belgium
13-15th Jun 2025
Deadline: 31st Mar 2025

This year’s annual conference of the China Work Group (China AG) will be held on June 13-15, 2025 at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), in Belgium.
Founded in 1992 as a work group for young researchers, the China AG aims to further exchanges between junior scholars from Sinology, Chinese studies, and related fields of research. The annual conferences promote the presentation of ongoing or recently finished research projects and discussions of current challenges and experiences with teaching.

Furthermore, they provide a space for networking and informal conversations about one’s ownresearch.

We ask junior scholars (starting from the BA level up to those interested in a doctorate, postdocs etc.) to send us title and abstract (200-250 words) of their presentations. Contributions on all academic topics relating to China are welcome, explicitly including interdisciplinary approaches. We also accept suggestions of desired topics for discussions concerning teaching.

The main conference language is English, but presentations may be delivered in other commonly spoken languages.… Read more ⤻

GEI, Braunschweig, Germany
25-26th Apr 2025
Deadline (Abstracts): 17th Apr 2025

As we enter the 2020s, digital technologies—such as big data analytics and generative AI—have become increasingly integrated into education. Promoted in national and international policy documents as transformative tools capable of addressing enduring challenges like educational disparities and the constraints of standardized evaluation, these technologies have spurred signifi-cant optimism. Concurrently, a growing body of scholarship calls for a critical examination of such techno-optimism. Researchers are increasingly focused on uncovering the discourse and power dynamics that underpin the integration of digital technologies in education, as well as conducting fieldwork to explore their localized enactments and social effects.

As a part of the research project “The Digital Transformation of School Education in China: Policies, Governance Structures and Local Stakeholders,” this workshop aims to gathering schol-ars who adopt qualitative research methods to address international relevant topics within Chi-nese contexts, including but not limited to:

1. Philosophical, Historical, and Socio-Cultural Perspectives:
   How have digital technologies been articulated and deployed within China’s social, cultural and educational context?

13-15th Nov 2025
University of Münster, Germany
Deadline: 31st Mar 2025

Religious traditions have long served as dynamic vehicles for the transfer and transformation of cultural knowledge across societies. In 19th and 20th century Asia, profound political, social, and cultural changes affected interactions between religious actors, institutions, and ideas, fostering unprecedented movements of knowledge within and beyond religious communities. This conference seeks to explore the mechanisms, actors, spaces and outcomes of intercultural knowledge transfer with a particular focus on East Asian and Indo-Persian regions. By examining these processes, the conference aims to deepen our understanding of how religious frameworks influenced the production, adaptation, and dissemination of knowledge across cultures. We invite papers that engage with the central question: How did religious contexts facilitate the transfer and transformation of knowledge in, about and across Asia from early modern times to the 20th century?

Send Abstracts to: knowledgetransfer2025@uni-muenster.de

Download this announcement’s official PDF:

27th Jun 2025
Deadline: 31st Mar 2025
School of Art, Birmingham City University, UK

The Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) at Birmingham City University aims to foster new understandings and perspectives of Chinese contemporary arts, design, and visual culture through interdisciplinary practices and theoretical studies. Following the 17-year success of our CCVA Annual Conference, which invites researchers, curators, artists, designers, and practitioners at all stages of their careers to share the latest research development on the theme proposed each year, we inaugurated the first CCVA PhD Forum on June 30th, 2023. This new forum provided a platform for scholars and doctoral students from the UK, China, and Austria, among other locations, to present and engage in dialogue about their doctoral research. In the past two forums (2023 and 2024), we have welcomed nearly 30 PhD students and newly awarded PhDs from universities from the UK, the mainland Europe and Asia, to give presentations. The universities include University of Oxford, the Glasgow School of Art, University of the Arts London, University of Vienna, University of Amsterdam, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, etc.… Read more ⤻

KU Leuven, Belgium
1-3rd Jul 2025
Deadline: 20th Feb 2025

From antiquity to the present, rarely has a topic been discussed as widely in China as revenge. Literature, philosophy, law, theater, cinema, and many more fields have dealt with revenge for over two millennia and continue to negotiate it to this day. While in philosophical texts often
described as governed by ritual and specific rules, revenge can likewise be rampant, brutal, and used to defy social and political expectations, as found in Chinese novels and contemporary movies. Folk tales portray outlaws as heroes for taking revenge, whereas lawful state servants become the target of the joke. Conversely, the Triads operate outside the boundaries of the law, while their actions strictly conform to their self-imposed ritual codices, such as when and how to take revenge. And Chinese opera and theater have long used revenge for entertainment, while in recent years consumers have used entertainment products for revenge buying.… Read more ⤻

17-18th Jun 2025
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France
Deadline: 1st Feb 2025

We are pleased to announce that the Fourth Conference of the China Academic Network on Gender will be hosted by the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle on 17-18 June 2025. Titled ‘Voicing Gender in China,’ the conference seeks to explore the multiple sites of intersection between voice and gender in Chinese society, past and present.

Within Chinese studies, fruitful articulations between voice and gender studies have drawn from studies of women’s political activism in history and sociology, exploring the ways in which activists and organisers have articulated new political identities in rallying cries and everyday protest. Literary scholars have looked at the shaping of gendered subjectivities through self-narratives and autobiographies, paying close attention to dialogue, orality and the mechanisms of silencing within literary establishments. In recent years, an explosion of sensory histories have explored how gender is enacted and defined through music, opera, dance and song.… Read more ⤻

22-23rd Apr 2025 | Zoom
Abstract due: 10th Jan 2025

This is part of the UK-China Humanities Alliance International Forum Series, ‘World Maps and World Cultures’.

From the inception of BBS to the rise of Facebook’s metaverse, virtual spaces continue to attract a wide audience with a promise for an alternative realm characterized by a decentralized network of communication and unparalleled connectivity.

For detailed Call for Paper, please visit
https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/online-symposium-virtual-spaces-and-new-horizons-humanities-digital-age

Download this announcement’s official Docx.:

University College Cork, Ireland
4–8th Jul 2025
Deadline: 15h Jan 2025

In this conference we focus on the various ways new media (digital media especially) provide spaces for preserving, creating, playing, sharing, teaching, or discussing music, and the ways these spaces are impacting what musicians, culture bearers, and others do in the musical part of their lives. Prospective participants are encouraged to submit proposals that resonate with this theme. However, presentations of any new research in the broad area of Chinese music studies are also welcome, whether these engage with the theme or not.

CHIME: Worldwide Platform for Chinese Music (https://www.chimemusic.net/)

New digital media provide for “repackaging” of traditions, access to distant events, gestures of sharing and commemoration, and spaces (and toolkits) for new creation, online learning, critical commentary, or playful remixing. We might study these situations in several ways:
•     as platforms and tools for new kinds of musical creation, curation, and participation
•     as spaces for new formats of presentation, repatriation, and commemoration
•     as settings where performance facets like musical expression, liveness, or authenticity are open to striking reformulations
•     as a source of musical materials, influences, threats, or inspirations
•     as contexts that raise expanded economic and reputational possibilities as well as ethical or legal concerns

We welcome proposals that address one or more of these questions, or which pose other questions related to the digital futures for Chinese music, as well as those relating to new research more broadly.… Read more ⤻

Cardiff University, Wales, UK
10th Jun 2025

This one-day workshop explores different ways in which gender intersected with practices of formal and informal diplomacy in modern Asia.
We invite proposals from researchers of all career stages for 20-minute presentations.
Proposals considering the role of gender in international, transnational, transimperial, and decolonial histories with a focus on East Asia and Southeast Asia and its global connections in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are particularly welcome to apply.

School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff University, Wales, United Kingdom
Keynote speaker: Professor Su Lin Lewis (University of Bristol)

Potential topics/themes may include, but are not limited to:

• Women and informal diplomacy
• Women in international and transnational organisations
• Gender and cultural diplomacy
• Gender and war
• Gender and propaganda
• Gender and decolonisation
• Masculinities
• Gendered discourses in diplomatic sources

The workshop aims to be a starting point for a future publication project.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short biographical note by 8 December 2024 to LopesH@cardiff.ac.uk… Read more ⤻

Université Jean Moulin, Lyon, France
26–28th May 2025
Deadline: 30th Jul 2024

Université Jean Moulin – Lyon 3 – IETT (Institut d’Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles)
Exchanges between China and France in the field of education, and more particularly higher education, are still under-researched and under-recognised. Based on the experience of the Sino-French Institute in Lyon, the aim of this conference will be to retrace the history of exchanges between France and China in this particular field and to highlight the dynamics of these exchanges, from the first attempts by French missionaries to those that emerged in the first half of the 20th century. While the history of certain institutions has been the subject of recent research or publications, the links between them and the future of individuals who have passed through these structures, in China or in France, are still poorly documented. Although France’s commitment to education in China began very early (17th century), it was from the end of the 19th century onwards that both Chinese and French initiatives, religious and secular, multiplied and helped to create a dynamic that developed and grew until 1950, contributing to the circulation of knowledge and the establishment of networks of relations in a wide variety of fields (scientific, legal, literary, philosophical, artistic, medical, etc.).… Read more ⤻

Ljubljana, Slovenia
20-23rd Jun 2025
Deadline: 15h Oct 2024

“The conference will revolve around the compelling theme of “Addressing Global Crises and Reimagining Solutions through Chinese Philosophy”
The current crises, such as aggressive wars, severe environmental disasters, unequal distribution of resources, viral pandemics, etc., are global problems that cannot be fully solved within the narrow framework of individual countries or nation-states. They must also be addressed within the larger framework of global cooperation and solidarity. Such strategies require the development of genuine intercultural dialogue, i.e., dialogue that goes beyond the currently fashionable terminologies and can lead to a truly equal transcultural exchange of knowledge and ideas. This conference aims to explore both traditional and contemporary Chinese philosophical perspectives, seeking their contributions towards crafting a new planetary ethos that emphasizes mutual understanding and practices of solidarity in confronting these universal challenges.

Download the official announcement’s PDF:

Visit the conference website: https://iscp-online1.org/conferences/… Read more ⤻