Speaker:  Margaret Hillenbrand, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture; Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford University On the evening of November 18th, 2017, a blaze broke out in a two-story building in Xinjian urban village, just outside Beijing’s sixth ring road. At least 19 people, including 8 children, died in the flames. Using fire safety

Speaker:  Cole Roskam, Professor of Architectural History, Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong Beginning in the 1970s and intensifying during the 1980s, the People’s Republic of China initiated international scholarly exchange programs with numerous countries at a range of levels and scales within Chinese society. These interactions were intended to facilitate knowledge transfer, particularly

Speaker:  Zhu Fangsheng, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Duke Kunshan University This talk will trace the origins and consequences of how contemporary Chinese cities govern public school admissions. School districts became the central device in public school admissions in China, despite their absence of fiscal or administrative foundations. I argue that cities repurposed school districts to

Speaker:  Isabella Jackson, Assistant Professor in Chinese History, Trinity College Dublin The Shanghai International Settlement was the site of key developments of the Republican period: economic growth, rising Chinese nationalism, and the Sino-Japanese conflict. Managed by the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC, 1854–1943), it was beyond the control of both the Chinese and the foreign imperial