Jingyu Mao is hosting a film screening event titled: »Worlds of Labour: from socialist China (1980s) to late-socialist Vietnam (2010s)«

The documentaries »North China Factory« (1980) and »Nimble Fingers« (2017) will be shown. After that there will be a discussion with the director of Nimble Fingers, Parsifal Reparato. The event is hosted via Zoom and everybody is welcome to join. 

Das DFG geförderte Projekt `Navigating University Spaces´ sucht zum 1. Januar 2023 eine/n Research Assistant. Die Stelle wird für maximal drei Jahre besetzt. Einsendeschluss ist der 10. November 2022.

On October 15th Phill Wilcox participated in a workshop entitled: Infrastructural Narratives: An Interdisciplinary Workshop in London. 

For more information klick here. 

We are pleased to announce the WelfareStruggles Policy Brief Series is now available online. This series is edited by Prof. Minh Nguyen and features short comparative assessments of a number of key issues that characterise the institutional contexts of labour mobility and welfare provision in China and Vietnam. These issues are directly implicated in the politics around the care of the migrant labour force that we are investigating in this project. The Policy Brief is written for a broad range of audience, including NGO workers, policy makers, researchers, students, and anyone interested in the similarities and differences between the Chinese and Vietnamese institutional contexts. 

Minh Nguyen is serving as a Steering Committee member of the 3rd UK-GERMAN FRONTIERS OF HUMANITIES SYMPOSIUM on 09 - 10 May 2022 (virtual conference). This year’s conference draws on the insights of the humanities and social sciences on the theme of ‘Mobilities’, exploring how mobilities have shaped, are shaping, and will shape our environments – both social and natural – and our interaction with them, through time. The symposium’s program can be downloaded here. 

Phill Wilcox has published a paper on events in Laos in 2021 as an invited contribution for the annual review of events in Southeast Asia published by Southeast Asian Affairs.  The title is: “Laos in 2021: (Im)mobility with infrastructure and Covid”.

Jingyu Mao has published a paper, co-authored with her colleague Qing Lin, on China Perspectives. The title is: ‘A New Job after Retirement’: Negotiating Grandparenting and Intergenerational Relationships in Urban China. https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.13520

From 13th to 15th January 2022, Dr Jingyu Mao has attended the workshop organised by the project 'Social Worlds: China's Cities as Spaces of Worldmaking' at Würzburg University. She presented a work-in-progress draft entitled "'Friends are those who can help you out': unpacking the understandings and experiences of friendship among young migrant workers in China", and has received constructive feedback on her draft. She also participated in lively discussions of other participants' papers, which share the common theme of the social world, urban spaces, and contemporary China. 

Minh Nguyen (Bielefeld University) and Nicolas Lainez (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement) will convene the panel The Financialization of Everyday Life in Vietnam in the 2022 EUROSEAS Conference. Allison Truitt will be the panel discussant. Minh Nguyen and Minh Ngoc Luong from Bielefeld University will present their papers in this panel. For further information please follow the link.

Phill Wilcox (Bielefeld University) and Simon Rowedder (Passau University) will convene the panel Negotiating China in Southeast Asia: (re)thinking development via infrastructure schemes in the 2022 EUROSEAS Conference. For further information please follow the link. 

The international workshop Reconfiguring Vietnam is taking place on 21-22 April 2022 at the Max Planck for Social Anthropology in Halle as a hybrid event. Convened by Minh Nguyen and Kirsten Endres, it is a collaboration between the institute and AG Social Anthropology of Bielefeld's Faculty of Sociology.

The workshop will recaste the economic lives of Vietnamese living in Vietnam and beyond, i.e. the penetration of global finance, ideas of entrepreneurship, digitalization of economic activities and integration of Vietnamese labour into the global labor market through translocal and transnational migration. In particular, the workshop will address three themes: a) Gender and Private Life, b) Culture and Identity, c) Class and Consumption. For further information please follow the link. 

Phill Wilcox has been invited to give comments on a keynote speech by Professor Tim Oakes (University of Colorado-Boulder) at a conference hosted by the Finnish Society for Development Research - Development Days 2022 on 17-18 February 2022.

We are delighted to announce the publication of the monograph "Heritage and the Making of Political Legitimacy in Laos: The Past and Present of the Lao Nation” by Phill Wilcox. This book takes a fresh look at issues of legitimacy, heritage, and national identity for different members of the Lao population. It argues that the political system has become sufficiently embedded to avoid imminent risk of collapse but suggests that it is facing new challenges primarily in the form of rising Chinese influence in Laos.

For further information please follow the link.

Researchers from the social anthropology working group attended the 12th International Convention of Asia Scholars convened (virtually) in Kyoto, Japan. Dr Jake Lin convened a panel entitled 'Migrant labour and Welfare Restructuring in China and Vietnam'. Dr Phill Wilcox co-convened a panel entitled 'Aspiring to the "Chinese dream": Local Perceptions of Chinese Globalisation and Development in Asia'. Both researchers also presented papers in their respective panels.

Social anthropology staff will also attend (online) the European Association of Southeast Asian Studies Conference in September 2021. Professor Minh Nguyen is an invited discussant for a panel entitled 'Between Perils and Promises of Mobility: Aspiration, Possibility and the "Good Life" in Southeast Asia'. Dr Phill Wilcox is convening a panel entitled: 'The Power of Gastronomy: Changing Urban Foodscapes in Southeast Asia' and is presenting her recently published article entitled 'Doing Coffee in Luang Prabang: Fusion and the Making of a World Heritage Space'.

We are delighted to announce the publication of the special issue "Rural Life in Late Socialism: Politics of Development and Imaginaries of the Future" edited by Phill Wilcox, Jonathan Rigg and Minh Nguyen in the European Journal of East Asian Studies. This is the first of the two special issues emerging from the ZIF conference "The Good Life in Late Socialist Asia: Aspirations, Politics and Possibilities" organised by Minh Nguyen and Phill Wilcox in September 2019. For further information please follow the link.