The Columbia China Center for Social Policy and Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) are excited to co-host the 2018-2019 Lecture Series on Policy and Society in Contemporary China, This interdisciplinary series examines multi-dimensions of policy and society in contemporary China and is supported by the Columbia School of Social Work and the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.
Six renowned speakers will present in this year-long lecture series. Michael Meyer, Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, will discuss his new book, The Road to Sleeping Dragon: Learning China from the Ground Up, on Oct. 11, 2018. In this talk, Meyer will recount his 22-year journey in China as well as his various interactions with China. Beginning with his arrival as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Sichuan in 1995, Meyer will articulate how he came to understand the country that looms so large on today’s global stage.
Iris Chi, the Chinese-American Golden Age Association/Frances Wu Chair for the Chinese Elderly at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, will offer a lecture on Social Work in Contemporary China: Challenges and Opportunities on Oct. 23, 2018. The history of social work in China is both long-standing and emerging. In this talk, Chi will cover the recent development of social work in China including how the international communities share their knowledge and resources, and the challenges and opportunities confronting the profession.
Robin Visser, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will give a lecture titled Bordering Chinese Eco-Literatures on Nov. 14, 2018. In this talk, Visser will discuss her research on literary works set in southwest China, Xinjiang, the Tibetan plateau, Inner Mongolia, and Taiwan that feature diverse ecosystems rapidly transforming due to climate change and unprecedented rates of development and domestic migration.
Rachel Murphy, Professor of Chinese Development and Society and Head of School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies at Oxford University, will offer a lecture on Labor Migration and Social Development in Contemporary China on April 25, 2019. Murphy’s talk will examine transformations in China due to inter-related processes of industrialization, urbanization, demographic transition, and marketization, drawing from her ongoing book project about children of rural-urban labor migrants in two rapidly-urbanizing interior provinces.
Julian Chun-Chung Chow, the Hutto-Patterson Charitable Foundation Professor and Director of Guizhou Berkeley Big Data Innovation Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, will present on Computational Social Welfare: Application of Big Data in Research and Practice in spring 2019. In this talk, Chow will extend the application of big data analysis to the field of social work and welfare such as access to services, organizational efficiency, quality of public and private programs and cost reduction, drawing from an innovative model for improving the way society can support vulnerable populations.
Scott Rozelle, the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Rural Education Action Program in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, will discuss Education Inequality in China in spring 2019. In this talk, Rozelle will first examine the middle-income trap and human capital inequality confronted by China and then focus on the rural-urban inequalities in education in China, proposing practical yet low-cost solutions to promote rural education based on his team’s research findings.
All events in this lecture series are free and open to the public. Selected lectures are available via livestream. Please join us in person or online. All are welcome!
