West China Research Initiative

Supporting collaborative research on China’s Western Regions

In 2016, the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies established a new collaborative partnership with Sichuan University’s Research Center for the Study of Western China to promote research and to facilitate scholarly exchange between the two institutions.

Research areas for collaboration focus on the archaeology and art history of Western China; Tibetan and Buddhist Studies; pre-modern, modern, and contemporary history and society in Western China; and research on the minority cultures of Western China.

Since 2016, many Harvard faculty members and students have gone to the center to not only conduct research in collaboration with their Sichuan University counterparts, but to also give lectures, go to archaeological sites, and to study Chinese and Tibetan languages.