Zhongshan University

Chen Guiming is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Sun Yat-sen University. His doctoral dissertation focuses on the social and cultural history of Gujiao District, Shanghang County, West Fujian from the Late Qing to the 1950s. Combining methods from history and anthropology, and using both official and local records, it explores the specific manifestation of modern political power at the local level and local responses. Ultimately, it aims to shed light on the relationship between the Communist political culture and the transformation of rural society.

Professor Chen teaches philosophy at Zhongshan University. He has produced some influential publications in comparative philosophy, phenomenology and Christian thought. 

Jia Wenjuan is a Ph.D. Candidate at Sun Yat-sen University. Her major is Sociology, specializing in labor research and organization research. She has investigated the power of foremen in the private garment industry and the contract system in the Chinese construction industry. Her current doctoral dissertation focuses on the change of the power regime in the workplace from a Chinese state-socialism period to a market-socialism period. Through a historical comparative perspective, she will research how workers’ protest during the production process in a SOE is shaped by the contradiction between the Chinese official ideology and discourse and market-economy practice. This research will argue workers’ continual protest against managers and compromise with managers in the workplace isn’t capable only of changing a power regime but also reproducing one.

Yao Dadui is a Ph. D candidate in the Department of Chinese at Sun Yat-sen University, China. Since receiving his M.A. degree with a thesis on nationalism and the Novel Revolution in the late Qing period, he has been teaching in Nanfang College of Sun Yat-sen University. During his stay at HYI, he will complete his dissertation which focuses on the interaction between Protestant missionaries and Chinese literati in treaty ports with respect to the modernization of Chinese literature. He will focus on the new modernized elements in the Protestant Chinese literary tracts and the treaty port literati’s works, especially in vernacular Chinese, literary style and its value content, and will consider late Qing literature in both the present and the precedent, the foreign factor and the local matter. He also devotes continuous attention to classical Chinese poetry in modern times.

Zeng Fanxu is Associate Professor at the School of Journalism & Communication, Tsinghua University. Previously, he was Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism, Sun Yat-Sen University (Zhongshan University). Prior to that, Dr. Zeng was a journalist for the South Newspaper Group in Guangzhou for several years. His research concentrates on media and grassroots politics in China, especially NGO media strategy and civil society development, media and popular contentions, as well as media and public policy change. While at the Harvard-Yenching Institute, he focused on a study about the relationship between the media and the rising urban contentions in China under the supervision of Professor Elizabeth J. Perry.

Yang Xiaoliu, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Sun Yat-sen University. Her research fields are applied anthropology and urban anthropology. Her research topics include urban and rural community development, rural urbanization and policy consultation. She has conducted field research in Southern, Southwest, Northeast, Northwest and Central China since 2001. During her year at Harvard-Yenching Institute, Professor Yang will work on the research of the localized urbanization of Foshan City, in Pearl River Delta, with Professor Michael Herzfeld in the Department of Anthropolgy, Harvard University.

Zhang Fengqian is an Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy, Sun Yet-Sen University at Guangzhou, China.  He received his B.A. from Lanzhou University, M.A. from Beijing Normal University, and Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Chinese Academic of Social Science.  He teaches History of Chinese Ancient Philosophy, Introduction to Ancient Classic Texts, Philosophy of Taoism.  His research interests range from history of conceptions in Chinese traditional philosophy, ancient philosophical literatures, and archeological documents related to Chinese philosophy, study of Confucian classics to cultural and social issues in Modern China.