Press release: Göttingen University to open the first Academic Confucius Institute worldwide

Nr. 170/2013 - 08.10.2013

Research and education on modern China – Cooperation with Chinese partner universities

(pug) In early 2014, Göttingen University will be opening the first Academic Confucius Institute worldwide. The institute aims to do primarily research-based work and transfer current research results into the public. Göttingen University and the Chinese funding organisation Hanban have contractually agreed upon the institute being conducted in co-operation with Göttingen’s Chinese partner universities, the University of Nanjing and the Beijing Foreign Studies University. That not only makes the Göttingen institute the first research-orientated Confucius Institute in the world, but also the first in Germany which unites the competencies of several outstanding Chinese institutions of higher education.

"Göttingen is ideally suited for an Academic Confucius Institute," says Professor Hiltraud Casper-Hehne, Göttingen University's Vice President for International Affairs. "We set up the Centre for Modern East Asian Studies, which is excellently equipped with five professors. Göttingen University is the first in Europe to have established a degree programme for teaching Chinese as a foreign language and the only university in Germany to offer a professorship in the didactics of teaching Chinese as a foreign language." Beyond this, Lower Saxony is the first federal state to offer Chinese as a standard foreign language in its schools.

"One central area the Göttingen Confucius Institute will be concentrating on is research into the didactics of teaching Chinese as a foreign language in the classroom and converting this into practice," explains Professor Casper-Hehne. This means holding academic workshops, continuing teacher education courses and consultations for schools. Secondly, the institute aims to disseminate the knowledge gained on modern China through current research in the humanities, social and economic sciences to the science, business, and media communities, associations and the political arena as well as to the public at large. This aim will be pursued in international workshops, conferences and lecture series among other events.

With these aims, the Göttingen Institute will be following an innovative concept. Previous Confucius Institutes are primarily involved with courses on teaching the Chinese language and culture. In 116 countries, there are currently about 430 institutes, 134 in Europe and, so far, 13 in Germany. Responsible for the coordination and management of the institutes is the Hanban, a non-governmental organisation that reports to the Chinese Ministry of Education. According to the Hanban, the Confucius Institutes around the world will in future dedicate more effort to strengthening the integration of language and cultural exchange while raising the quality of Chinese education and continuing teacher education, in addition to their main mission of teaching language.

Contact address:
Professor Hiltraud Casper-Hehne
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Vice President for International Affairs
Wilhelmsplatz 1, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Phone (0551) 39-12184
E-mail: hiltraud.casper-hehne@zvw.uni-goettingen.de
Website: www.uni-goettingen.de/de/110984.html