Global China Research Centre

The rapid expansion of China and its increasing appetite for internationalisation need to be understood through the perspective of cultural diversification and global interaction. Currently there are University of Exeter faculty members in several departments who are involved in China-related research. There are also growing numbers of faculties who are developing research connections with scholars working in China. The centre aims to establish UoE as a hub of scholarly exchange. It will, first stimulate new interdisciplinary research within the realm of humanities, arts, and social sciences; and second, channel the existing works of UoE scholars in these areas to the large Chinese-speaking audience.

The centre has paradigm-shifting potential. With the growing connection between the UK and China, more British universities have introduced Chinese studies programmes and research centres. However, almost all of them have taken the conventional approach of area studies. By proposing the concept of “Global China”, the centre will provide an innovative perspective of seeing China not only as a geographic region, but more importantly as a non-European epistemology. It will mobilise UoE’s academic strength and serve as an incubator for scholarly innovation, which transcends the conventional boundaries of area studies and stimulates the construction and reconstruction of knowledge in general.

Contact us

Centre Director

Dr Yue Zhuang

General enquiries

Email: Y.Zhuang@exeter.ac.uk

News and events

The Global China Research Centre organises a variety of seminars, talks, conferences, workshops, lectures and symposia. Our upcoming events are displayed below. Seminars will usually take place between 3 and 4pm, unless otherwise stated. Locations may vary.

Forthcoming seminars

There are no current events to display, but please come back soon for updates.

Past seminars

WhenDescriptionLocationAdd to your calendar
29 May 2025

The Ten Kings of Earth Prisons: Theatricality of Death in Late Imperial China

Digital Humanities Laboratory Add event
28 March 2025

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: March 2025

Online Add event
20 March 2025

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: March 2025

Online Add event
6 March 2025

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: March 2025

Building One Matrix Add event
19 February 2025

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: February 2025

Online Add event
6 February 2025

The Social and Cultural History of Sound in China

Digital Humanities Laboratory Add event
13 December 2024

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: December 2024

Online Add event
29 November 2024

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: November 2024

Online Add event
21 November 2024

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: November 2024

Online Add event
14 November 2024

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: November 2024

Online Add event
18 October 2024

Graduate and Early Career Research Seminar: October 2024

Online Add event
13 June 2024

Cultural Encounters in Modern China: Graduate and ECR Workshop

Queens Building, LT4.2 Add event
13 March 2024

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Forum Seminar Room 06 Add event
11 March 2024

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Digital Humanities Laboratory Add event
26 February 2024

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Old Library 130 Add event
14 February 2024

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Old Library 130 Add event
31 January 2024

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Queens Building D Add event
15 January 2024

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Digital Humanities Laboratory Add event
13 December 2023

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Online and on campus Add event
15 November 2023

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Queens Building F Add event
15 November 2023

Global China Research Centre Graduate and Early-Career Research Seminar Series

Queens Building F Add event
18 October 2023

The Global China Research Centre's Graduate and ECR Seminar Series

 Add event
3 October 2023

Keynote lecture for the Global China Research Centre's Graduate and ECR Seminar Series 2023-24

 Add event
26 April 2023

Missionaries and Diplomats

Queens Building 1B  Add event
9 January 2023

Keynote lecture for the Global China Research Centre's Graduate and ECR Seminar Series 2022-23

 Add event
7 December 2022

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

 Add event
17 February 2021

Learning from pictures? Illustrations of porcelain manufacture as ‘how to’ guides.

Online Add event
26 - 27 June 2019

Lecture series and workshop on ‘Translating Chinese Poetry’

Queens Building F Add event
30 January 2019

Dubious Distinctions: Why Europe, not China was Responsible for the Great Divergence?

Amory B106 Add event
5 December 2018

Translation as a Lingua Franca. The East Asian Response to Global English

Queen's Building, room E Add event
5 December 2018

Global China Research Centre Seminar Series: Translation as a Lingua Franca, the East Asian Response to Global English

Queens Building E Add event
21 November 2018

Chinese and European Perspectives on Architecture and Heritage

Forum Seminar Room 4 Add event
29 June 2018

Translating Chinese Classics Tao Te Ching

Queens Building F Add event
24 January 2018

Historical Links between Indochinese Islam and China

Queen's Digital Humanities Seminar 2 Add event
16 - 17 December 2017

The First International Conference on Global Discourse and Chinese Experience

Shanghai Add event
13 July 2017

China's Belt and Road Initiative

Forum Seminar Room 06 Add event
16 June 2017

Postutopian Returns: The Peach Blossom Spring in Contemporary Chinese Landscape Aesthetics

Queens Building F Add event
10 May 2017

Reviving the past, civilising the modern: cultural governance and hegemonic discourse in China

Queens Building E Add event
8 March 2017

How China Sees Global Governance

Queens Building LT6.1  Add event
11 June 2016

“China in the Modern World: Paradigms and Methodologies”

 Add event
27 January 2016

Eating food in China, Greece, India: taste, the humours and the Cosmos

Queens Building E Add event
15 - 18 May 2015

Advanced International Workshop on the Senses in Sino-Western Cultural Exchanges in the Early Modern Period

Fudan University, China Add event
16 March 2015

Chinese Studies Seminar Series

 Add event
4 March 2015

Russian emigres in Shanghai

Washington Singer 234 Add event
25 February 2015

Sex in the cloister: cross-cultural perspective of late imperial Chinese anticlerical literature

Amory A115 Add event
16 February 2015

From Constitutionalisation to Revolution: The Politics of "Fa-Tong" and the Disenchantment of Constitutionalism in China, 1912-1925

Queens Building M Add event
14 January 2015

The Mid-Eighteenth-Century Novel: A Dream of Red Mansion in Comparison with Clarissa and Tom Jones

Queens Building N Add event
25 November 2014

Workshop: Body, Medicine and Landscape: China and Europe, 17-19th centuries

Queens Building MR1 Add event
11 November 2014

Displacing the Western Powers in the Gulf: the Strategic Implications of China's Growing Role in the Arab/Persian Gulf Region

Peter Chalk Centre 1.3 Add event

Find out more

GCRC aims to first encourage interdisciplinary research about China. It also facilitates scholarly exchanges between University of Exeter and Chinese institutes in order to encourage joint research activities on other subjects within the border area of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Recognising the growing connection between UoE and Chinese institutes, we have established GCRC in order to serve as:

  • A hub for scholarly exchange
  • An umbrella organisation which accommodates scholars and postgraduates with research interests in and about China.
  • An incubator for creative interdisciplinary research published in both English and Chinese
  • A stage to inspire a paradigm-shifting new approach to Chinese Studies
  • An outpost to promote Exeter scholars in China and attract Chinese students to pursuit postgraduate studies

Our people

Management Board

Professor Adam Watt

Professor Adam Watt

Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor

A.A.Watt@exeter.ac.uk Exeter

Dr Yue Zhuang

Dr Yue Zhuang

Associate Professor in Chinese and Art History and Visual Culture

01392724274 Y.Zhuang@exeter.ac.uk Exeter

Postgraduate and ECR Seminar Co-convenors

Caice Jin

Caice Jin

Postgraduate Researcher

cj471@exeter.ac.uk Exeter

Jia Liu

Postgraduate Researcher

jl1375@exeter.ac.uk Exeter

Affiliated members

Postgraduate affiliated members
Zhangmei Tang PhD student in Politics
External members
Dr Bruce Currey  
Dr Catherine Owen Assistant professor in Xi’an International Studies University
Dr Junqing Wu Past & Present Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
International fellows
Dr Han Liu International Fellow
Professor Yongle Zhang Associate Professor of Legal History, Peking University

The Centre has partnerships with institutes and universities the world over.

The Centre for Studies in Politics and Law, Peking University

‌The vice director of the Centre for Studies in Politics and Law at Peking University, Prof Zhang Yongle was invited to the University of Exeter in 2014. He gave a talk in the Global China lecture series during his visit. Prof Zhang is an international affiliated fellow of the Global China Research Centre. Dr Zhiguang Yin has also been a fellow of the Centre for Studies in Politics and Law since 2015. Prof James Devenney, Dean of Exeter Law School, visited the centre and gave a talk in October 2015. The two centres are now discussing a summer school programme.

Consilium Research Institute, Chongqing University

Dr Zhiguang Yin is a fellow in the Consilium Research Institute.

Dujia Media network

Dujia Media is a growing Chinese new Media company. One of the students in Modern Languages Department, Chris Sargent, who is currently (2015-16) conducting a year abroad in China appears as a guest host in one of their programmes, sharing his observation of living in China as a foreigner. The Global China Research Centre is currently discussing further collaborative projects with Dujia Media.

National Institute of Strategic Communication, Peking University

Dr Zhiguang Yin gave a talk in the National Institute of Strategic Communication lecture series in 2015. NISC also hopes to host a series of collaborative conferences with Global China Research Centre.