A Word from the Director
One of the Fairbank Center’s greatest strengths is its intellectual community of scholars from around the globe. We are delighted to welcome this year’s cohort of scholars and affiliates to our community, especially as we return to in-person events and programs in the coming year.
The Fairbank Center has held firm in our commitment to scholarly exchange and open dialogue since our founding almost 70 years ago. We are proud to continue this tradition with a new cohort of affiliates. We are particularly pleased to once again welcome scholars from mainland China to join us in Cambridge after several years of travel restrictions. While the ongoing pandemic will mean that the experience of this year’s cohort will be unique, we are confident that they, like their predecessors, will enrich the Fairbank Center community, intellectually and interpersonally.
Our community of scholars
As always, the strength of our community is exemplified by the diverse research that the Center supports.
Our An Wang Postdoctoral Fellows, Chai Yee Leow and Shuai Li, will examine the early cultural impacts of “Western Regions” on the formation of the civilization that later became China. They will work in conjunction with the interdisciplinary “China Westward” research group, led by Professors Eugene Yuejin Wang and Leonard van der Kuijp.
Thanks to the ongoing generosity from the Hou Family, we are excited to again welcome two Hou Family Fellows for Taiwan Studies: Ruochen Bo and Nan-Hsu Chen. Their research on Taiwan’s cinema and history will enrich our long-established programming in Taiwan Studies.
We also welcome seventeen visiting scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as Japan, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to campus. Their research interests span the humanities, social sciences, and business. We look forward to interacting with them during their year at Harvard as they seek to further their research and collaboration.
More locally, we are also pleased to continue our nonresident associates program, which connects scholars in the New England area and beyond with our activities on campus. We welcome twelve new members to our vibrant network of over two hundred associates, many of whom have long-established ties to our Center.
Finally, the Fairbank Center also supports the work of Harvard’s graduate students. This year, our in-house professional development program will host ten graduate students as they write their dissertations. We will support an additional two students to conduct fieldwork in China through the Shum Fellowship.
Together with our faculty and staff, our new affiliates form an integral part of our community of over three hundred scholars and practitioners from across the globe. We hope each of you will take full advantage of connecting with each other – whether in-person or virtually – to learn, to collaborate, and to further our mission of advancing scholarship.
Connecting our campus
Especially as our campus opens up further, we encourage our affiliates to make the most of their time here at the Fairbank Center. Whether through attending events in one of our nine public lecture series, visiting our exhibitions, attending conferences and special events, utilizing our world-class library services, or gathering socially, there are many ways to become involved in the numerous activities on offer.
I wish you all a healthy, productive and fulfilling year ahead,