We have expertise covering a range of areas and disciplines on the study of contemporary China and Greater China including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Chinese Diaspora.
The research we conduct consists of several interrelated thematic focuses:
- Social and political developments in modern and contemporary China, with emphasis on Christianity in communist China, the link of the personal and spiritual to wider social and political developments in modern and contemporary China, and the discourse of happiness in the Chinese context
- Return migration from Southeast Asia to Maoist China, highly-skilled migration in Chinese cities, postcolonial border-crossing of mainland migrants to global Hong Kong, diasporic Chinese heritage, and migration-related museum and memory studies
- Social and cultural changes in urban China, with emphasis on the relationship between space, music, and sound in the production of Chinese cities and city areas, and contemporary memories and representation of Third Front factories in South-western China
- Contemporary Tibet, ethnicity in China, feminism and LGBT rights in China, and gender and sexuality in Chinese society in transition
- Sinophone cinema and literature, theatre studies, media studies and censorship in contemporary China.
Students considering doctoral research in Contemporary Chinese Studies at Westminster may also wish to note that the University of Westminster Archives holds an extensive Chinese Poster Collection.
Current and recent PhD projects
- ‘Elucidating the emergent interface between Chinese medicine and systems biology: A multi-sited ethnography’
- ‘The talking of objects: migratory experiences and subjectivities of British Chinese women in contemporary Britain’
- ‘The interpreter’s “power” in business setting: an empirical approach to the professional interpreter’s mediating-role’
- ‘Citizen publications (minkan) in China before the Internet’
- ‘Modernity, nationalism, and global marginalisation: the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the Taiwan Pavilion in Venice 1984-2009'