Participants

Minglu Chen
ARC Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Sydney

Paper topic: Private Entrepreneurs in the Party-state: An Insight into Women Entrepreneurs in China

Minglu Chen is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. She researches on Chinese private entrepreneurs' involvement in local politics and their class awareness. She has recently finished the book Tiger Girls: Women and Enterprise in the People's Republic of China (forthcoming, Routledge). She taught Chinese studies at the Department of International Studies, University of Guadalajara, Mexico in 2008-2009. She is now working on the project 'The new rich and the state in China: the social basis of power' with Prof. David Goodman and Dr. Beatriz Carrillo.


Flemming Christiansen
Professor of Chinese Studies, University of Leeds

Paper topic: China 2020: Through Train from Xiaokang to Shengtai Wenming

Flemming Christiansen (PhD Leiden 1990) is Chair in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds, UK and Director of the National Institute of Chinese Studies, White Rose East Asia Centre, teaching about Chinese society and politics. His main research interests are on social development in China, social class in contemporary China and the Chinese overseas. His main works include, Chinatown, Europe. An Exploration of Overseas Chinese Identity in the 1990s (London: RoutledgeCurzon 2003); Chinese Politics and Society. An Introduction. (London: Prentice Hall and Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996), with Rai; Encyclopedia of Modern China, 4 volumes. (Farmington: Charles Scribner's Sons; Thomson Gale Group, 2009), edited with Pong et al.; The Politics of Multiple Belonging. Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe and East Asia. (Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2004), edited with Hedetoft.


Ryan Dunch
Chair, East Asian Studies, University of Alberta

Paper topic: China's Future's Past

Ryan Dunch earned his BA in Asian Studies at the Australian National University (1987), his MA in History at the University of British Columbia (1991), and his Ph.D. in History at Yale University (1996). Since 1998 he has been on the faculty of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, where he is now Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies. A specialist in modern Chinese history, he is the author of Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857-1927 (Yale University Press, 2001), as well as articles and chapters on historical and contemporary facets of Christianity in Chinese society. His current research is on missionary publishing in Chinese before 1911. He serves as one of the editors of H-ASIA.


David Goodman
Director, Institute of Social Science, University of Sydney

Paper topic: Prospects for the General Election of 2020: Tradition and Transition in Chinese Politics

David Goodman is Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Sydney, where he is also Director of the Institute of Social Sciences. He was educated at the University of Manchester (Politics and Modern History) Peking University (Economics) and the London School of Oriental and African Studies (Chinese, and Chinese Politics.) His research has concentrated on China's provincial politics; the history of the Chinese Communist Party; and social and political change in China since 1900, especially at the local level. He is currently undertaking research on the formation of local elites in contemporary China (with Dr Beatriz Carrillo and Dr Minglu Chen); and on German colonial adventurers in China 1870-1937 (with Dr Yixu Lu.) He is also undertaking research on the War of Resistance to Japan in North China (1937-1945). His most recent publications are The New Rich in China: Future rulers, present lives (2008) and (with Bryna Goodman) Twentieth Century Colonialism in China (2010).


Hans Hendrischke
Professor, Chinese Political Economy, University of Sydney


Professor Hans Hendrischke is Professor of Chinese Political Economy and Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Sydney. He was educated at universities in Germany, Taiwan and Japan and did his postgraduate research at the Contemporary China Institute at the London School of Oriental and African Studies. He lived in China from 1979 working for the diplomatic service and the finance industry. In his academic career he headed the Centre for Chinese Political Economy at Macquarie University and was Head of Chinese Studies and Head of School at UNSW. A researcher on political and economic change in China, his current focus and publications are on emerging local entrepreneurship and local governance. His 2007 book China's Economy in the 21st Century: Enterprise and Business Behaviour (co-edited with B. Krug) was published in a paperback edition in 2009.


Gordon Houlden
Director, China Institute, University of Alberta

Paper topic: Future of Chinese Foreign Policy
Gordon Houlden is the Director of the China Institute of the University of Alberta. Mr. Houlden was born in Calgary, Alberta, and attended the University of Calgary where he received his B.A., and subsequently did graduate work at Carleton University in Ottawa, and at the University Nacional in Lima, Peru. He joined the Canadian Foreign Service in 1976, and has served in Ottawa in the East Asian, China, Caribbean, Latin American and Defence Relations divisions. Abroad Mr. Houlden has been posted to Havana, Hong Kong (twice), Warsaw, Beijing (twice - most recently as Minister 2001-2004), and as Executive Director of the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei (2004-2006). While a foreign service officer Mr. Houlden studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1981-1983), and at the National Defence College in Kingston (1992-1993). His last assignment before joining the University of Alberta was as Director General of the East Asian Bureau of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Mr. Houlden is married and he and his wife Karen Houlden have five adult children.


Ka Lin
Professor, College of Public Administration, Zhejiang University

Paper topic: Social Quality in Mainland China: Problems and Prospect

Ka Lin is the deputy director of European Research Center of Zhejiang University, the chief-editor for the International Journal of Social Quality, and the international co-editor of the Journal of Comparative Social Welfare. He won his PhD from University of Tampere in Finland (1999), and working in this university as research fellow (1999-2002) and in University of Turku as senior research (2003-2006). His working areas include social policy and social work, and the research interests on the themes of global and/or comparative social policies, the Chinese system of social security, welfare service and social care, etc. He made publications in numerous international journals of these fields. He acts as the member of the Chinese Social Policy Expert Committee, the member (daily board) of Chinese Association of Social Work Education, and the Chairperson of the Asian Consortium for Social Quality.


Hinrich Voss
Roberts Academic Research Fellow, Centre for International Business, University of Leeds

Paper topic: FDI and Business Networks: The EU-China Foreign Direct Investment Relationship

Hinrich Voss (PhD Leeds) is a Roberts Academic Research Fellow at the Centre for International Business University of Leeds (CIBUL). His research interests concentrate mainly on if and how the international business strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from developed and developing countries are affected by climate change policies and the institutional objectives to move towards "Future Energies"; if and how MNEs adapt their international business configuration, and; how MNEs help to distribute "Future Energies" related technologies globally. Hinrich is also conducting research on the internationalisation and the international competitiveness of mainland Chinese companies. This research strand incorporates the influence of China's institutions on the international investment behaviour of Chinese firms. Before joining CIBUL, Hinrich was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the White Rose East Asia Centre/ National Institute for Chinese Studies. Hinrich is head of the advisory board of the NetImpact Chapter at Leeds University Business School".


Terry Woronov
Professor, Anthropology, University of Sydney

Paper topic: Personal Development, National Development: Vocational Education and Ideologies of Transformation in Urban China, 2010-2020

Terry Woronov is a lecturer in department of Anthropology, University of Sydney. A graduate of the University of Chicago, she studies urban children and youth in China. Her research focuses on social transformation in contemporary China. As an urban anthropologist, she is particularly interested in how China's rapidly-changing cities produce new opportunities for - and new constraints and limitations on - the nation's children and youth.


Heather Zhang
Director, MA Programmes, University of Leeds

Paper topic: Narrating Mobile Livelihoods in China: Risk, Agency and Networks

Heather Xiaoquan ZHANG is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies and Director of Postgraduate Studies at the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds, UK. Her research is in the field of social development, political economy, contemporary change and transformations in China and South East Asia, as well as qualitative research methodology. Her current research focuses on urbanisation, migration and livelihoods, social risk and social policy, health and wellbeing, globalisation, gender, agricultural and rural development, and poverty dynamics and institutional change in urban China.


Peiqin Zhou
Associate Professor, Sociology, Nanjing University

Paper topic: The World of God in English": A Preliminary Study of an English Bible Discussion Group in China

Peiqin Zhou is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology in the School of Social and Behavioral Study at Nanjing University in the People's Republic of China. She received her doctorate in mass communication from The University of Alabama and his master's degree in journalism and bachelor's degree in Chinese linguistics and literature from Nanjing University. After completing her doctoral program in the U.S.A., she returned to China and started teaching and doing research at Nanjing University. She has spent the academic year of 2009 at Drake University, Iowa, the U.S.A. as Fulbright Visiting Scholar.

Her research specialties are mass media and society. Her current research is focused on qualitative research methodology, environmental appeal in advertising and Christianity in China. She has published in the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Communication, Journalism and Communication (in Chinese), China Media Research and Film Art (in Chinese). She has also published several book chapters on social effects of media and presented many research papers at international conferences.


Xiaohong Zhou
Chair, Sociology, Nanjing University

Paper topic: Globalization, Social Transformation and Construction of the Middle Classes: A Comparative Study Targeted on China

Xiaihong Zhou is a professor of sociology and Dean of School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, China. After completing his undergraduate and graduate program at Nanjing Medicine College and Nankai University, he has worked for Nanjing University after 1987. 1997, he got his Ph.D. degree from Department of History, Nanjing University. He had an opportunity to stay at Fairbank Center for Eastern Asian Research, Harvard University as visiting scholar from 1999-2000. His major area of research is sociological theory, social psychology and modern china studies. He has published over ten books and 70 academic papers, and he is chief editor of Journal of China Studies (Beijing).


Hong Zhu
Professor, School of Management, Nanjing University

Paper topic: Body Capital and Body Urbanization - A Case Study of Chinese Dagongmei (the female Farmer Workers) City Adaptation

Zhu Hong is associate professor of school of management and director of the center for market investigation, Nanjing University. She graduated from the Department of Sociology, Nanjing University and gotten her Master degree and Ph. D. in this University. 2005-2006, Zhu Hong was visiting scholar in the department of sociology, Seoul National University. Her dissertation focused on rural women labors' social adaptation in urban, now her academic interesting includes Chinese social trust especial social trust in market exchange and social transformation, and Chinese consumption behavior. Since 2004 she has published over ten papers on Social psychology, consumption studies and organization behavior. Now she is writing her second work Social Trust in Chinese Society: one comprehensive perspective.