Public Lecture: Standing up with Chinese diasporas

Standing up with Chinese diasporas

Abstract: Chinese diasporas, especially Chinese students at UK higher education institute (HEIs), are at the front line of global polarities, where they experience a “double victimization” by an increasingly hostile UK environment and the long arm of the Chinese state. Despite representing over 25% of the UK’s international student body and contributing £2.4 billion in tuition fees a year, Chinese students remain underserved from the HEIs that host them. Concerns about integrity, espionage, and integration create an environment of suspicion, reinforcing their lived experiences of isolation, alienation and grievance.

Based in London, our project works with universities, students, and Chinese diasporic activists and artists, to co-create an inclusive support network for Chinese students. A core component of our initiative is to connect Chinese students with their progressive diasporic peers. Through arts-based workshops, such as stand-up comedy, film-screenings, and collective artmaking, we create safe spaces where Chinese communities can speak out their “bitterness”, build mutual bonds, and ultimately transform shared trauma into a collective desire for healing and future action. Beyond providing support, this project generates insights into how Chinese diasporas claim space and re-construct politicized subjectivities in transnational contexts. We seek to theorize the affective and embodied dimensions of diasporic politics and contribute to the scholarship on feminist affective theory, global civil society, and critical IR. 

Speaker:

Dr Yanran Yao is Lecturer in Chinese politics and society from Lau China Institute of King’s College London. Her research focuses on civil society, gender, authoritarians, and the politics of Chinese diasporas. Her academic interests are deeply personal, shaped by her lived experiences as a female mainland Chinese diasporic researcher in Hong Kong and London. She is leading a project on “supporting Chinese diasporas” at King’s, which aims to foster inclusive support networks and critical engagement with the Chinese diasporic community.

Professor Astrid Nordin holds the Lau Chair of Chinese International Relations in the Lau China Institute. She is also Senior Fellow of the Institute for Social Futures, and Associate Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. Her research develops critical conceptual tools that draw on Chinese and other global traditions of thought, and uses these to understand global challenges as they relate to China’s growing global role - from the Belt and Road Initiative, through sustainable cities, to practices of censorship and resistance.