New Project: Diffractive Knowledge Production
On my last day as the Director of Studies for Sociology, I was thrilled to learn to that my BA/Leverhulme Small Grant has been successful. It’s only a one-year project but the perfect time and perfect way to kick start a bigger intellectual journey. The project, ‘Diffractive Knowledge Production in North-South Innovation Strategies: A Study … Continue reading
BBC The World Tonight Interview
I’m a fan of Radio 4’s ‘The World Tonight’, as when I was doing my PhD, this used to be the programme that I fell asleep with! (But nowadays, I listen to almost everything through Pocket Casts which blurs the timeline of all programmes). It was great to be interviewed on this programme and to have a … Continue reading
BBC Documentary: China’s Great Science Leap
At the end of August, BBC Radio 4 launched a 2-episode programme on China’s science. Wohoo! I was so happy to see (or rather hear) it being broadcasted, for its editor Melanie Brown first got in touch with me about this idea in the summer of 2019. The original idea was to conduct interviews and … Continue reading
Dec 2019 – Climate Science Legacies
Before Christmas, I spoke at the conference, Climate Science Legacies and Contemporary Climate Policy & Action, at the University of Birmingham’s Brussels research office. It was a real delight to know Jon Oldfield, the conference organiser, and an expert on Russian environmental politics and his AHRC project Soviet Climate Science and Its Intellectual Legacies. It was a one-day conference, packed … Continue reading
Oct 2019 – NSF success!
I’m delighted to say that the project, Ethical Issues Surrounding Human Germline Genome Editing, that I’ve been developing with Kathleen Vogel (PI, University of Maryland) and Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley (George Mason University) has been funded by the National Science Foundation in the US. In the next 36 months, we will collaboratively (1) examine how U.S. and Chinese scientists … Continue reading
Oct 2019 – Newton Workshop
In October, the six of us (see below) pulled off a very successful interdisciplinary and cross-cultural workshop on ‘Promoting Social Embeddedness of New Biotechnologies:Co-Developing Public Engagement in and with China’ , funded by the Newton Fund. – No modesty reserved, as we had a group of wonderful delegates from China and the UK. I’m confident … Continue reading
Policy Impact in China
I’m really delighted to share the news that on 3 January 2019, Ministry of Science and Technology in China has officially accepted a set of policy recommendations on increasing transparency and public accountability of Chinese science and have circulated these recommendations in their Neican. ‘Neican’ refers to valued policy submissions which are put forward to ministers and other … Continue reading
British Council Grant
I’m delighted that our bid for the British Council’s Newton Fund has been successful. Collaborating with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, we are to host a 3-day interdisciplinary workshop brings together and empowers a new generation of bioscientists and social scientists from both China and the UK to critically and creatively examine what effective public … Continue reading
Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing
It was a great pleasure to share my ESRC project’s finding over two invited presentations at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing. My first Summit presentation focused on the causes and possible solutions to the ‘public engagement-deficit’ I identified in China’s rise as a global scientific power. I urged for a professional cultural and … Continue reading
Berlin, Berlin!
I’m so thrilled to have visited Berlin TWICE this autumn. The first trip was in late September. Thanks to Prof. Yasemin Soysal’s invitation, I attended the ‘Cultural Mobilities and their Transnational Entanglements in East Asia’ workshop and shared my findings on how transnational influences shaped grassroots and government’s understanding on ‘Modernity’ in different ways. Given the fact … Continue reading
Joy Zhang 