Press release: Businesses guarantee five-year funding for professorship – modern orientation for China-focused research

Nr. 168/2009 - 07.09.2009

(pug) Enabled by funding from trade and industry, the Stiftungsprofessur for East Asian Studies/China at Göttingen University has been filled: Prof. Dr. Axel Schneider took up his position at the beginning of August 2009 and now heads the Seminar of East Asian Studies at the Faculty of Humanities. The appointment of this expert on East Asia gives Sinology in Göttingen a modern orientation without neglecting the subject’s classical and historical foundations. Taking a social and cultural approach, the research and teaching in this area seeks to throw light on China and its neighbouring countries, as well as to examine both the processes of modernisation and the cultural developments and discourses that have been taking place over the past 150 years.

Commercial enterprises in Lower Saxony, among them the KWS SAAT AG (Einbeck), the Norddeutsche Landesbank (Hanover), Sievert AG & Co. KG (Osnabrück) and THIMM – The Highpack Group (Northeim), are co-financing the professorship for a period of five years. Alongside the research work, the training of managerial personnel for work in business and academia is planned within the framework of an interdisciplinary range of study courses. Vice President Prof. Dr. Hiltraud Casper-Hehne explains that the University is also seeking to extend further its research and teaching activities dealing with the East Asian region.

Axel Schneider, born in 1962, studied Sinology, Japanology, Political Science and History at the universities of Erlangen and Bochum, as well as at Cheng-chi University in Taipeh (Taiwan). Professor Schneider worked at Heidelberg and Leiden (the Netherlands) universities, also spending several years as a visiting researcher and professor at Harvard (USA), Chengchi University (Taiwan) and Peking University (China). His doctoral thesis was written in the area of modern Chinese historiography and he now specialises in modern Chinese history, with special emphasis on the history of knowledge and ideas. He is currently working on a book on conservatism-motivated criticism of modernity in the areas of Chinese historical and moral thought. Professor Schneider’s next project will examine the renewed strength of Confucianism and Buddhism, particularly the Buddhist- and Confucianist-inspired population movements in Taiwan and on the Chinese mainland. In this context he will be working in cooperation with an international team of researchers from East Asia, Europe and the USA.