The China Quarterly Symposium
“The Politics of Knowledge Production about China”
Since its launch in 1960, The China Quarterly has been one of the leading journals where scholars from various disciplines publish their research on China. Building on the wealth of knowledge accumulated in the past decades and the hindsight gained through observing the evolution of our field, we are now at a critical juncture that calls for reflection on the relationship between China studies and knowledge production. This task is increasingly urgent, given the epistemological shift within the academy and a geopolitical climate that conditions social science and humanities research on multiple levels.
How can China scholars around the world maintain their academic independence in such a charged geopolitical environment? How can China studies better engage with recent debates on decolonizing knowledge production, especially regarding positionality and epistemology? How should we evaluate the negotiation between disciplinary scholarship – such as political science, sociology, and anthropology – and China studies in the past decades, and how do we envision the intellectual agenda moving forward? What are the new challenges faced by China studies at theoretical, epistemological, and methodological levels? Amidst the vociferous discursive field where academics, media, think tanks, and politicians are all trying to claim credentials on China expertise, how can scholars of China studies better navigate the current ecology of knowledge production?
To facilitate dialogues around these themes, The China Quarterly will organize a symposium in London in mid-to-late June 2025 (some travel funds are available), intending to publish a special issue in 2026 based upon selected papers presented at the symposium. We invite interested participants of the symposium to submit an extended abstract of 1,000 words to the editorial office at chinaq@soas.ac.uk by 13 December 2024. The initial screening of proposals will be double-anonymous so please avoid revealing your identity in the abstract. The outcome of the submission will be communicated by the end of January 2025, with the expectation that participants will then submit a short paper of around 4,000 words by 2 May 2025 in advance of the symposium.
If you have any queries, please contact the editorial office (chinaq@soas.ac.uk).