To celebrate the third anniversary of the establishment of the Institute of Area Studies, Peking University (PKUIAS), the First Doctorate Students Forum on World Area Studies was held in Jingyuan 101 on April 11, 2021. This forum, themed “PhD’s world overviews: area studies under an interdisciplinary perspective,” was organized by PKUIAS PhD students, who also participated. Other participants include PhD students from the Peking University Law School, the Department of History of Peking University, Renmin University of China and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The forum focused on the history and present situation of target regions, highlighted problem awareness and interdisciplinary communication, and emphasized academic dialogue and building an academic community. The forum had two sub-forums, the Middle East Sub-Forum and the Russia and Central Asia Sub-Forum. The former took “Historical, political, economic and social realities in the Middle East under a complex situation” as its theme, while the latter’s theme was “Russian and Eurasian studies from the perspective of theory and problems.”
Prof. Qian Chengdan, director of PKUIAS, delivered an opening speech, expressing congratulations on the successful opening of the forum. He hoped that the participating PhD students would seize the opportunity to showcase their learning and research results. He urged them to take the forum as a good start for further efforts to hold other nationwide PhD forums. Since using empirical data is the most essential nature of area studies, PhD students should be problem-oriented and keep improving their academic standard, Qian stressed.
Students participating in the Middle East Sub-Forum gave reports on many issues, including the major powers’ intervention in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, China-Morocco cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines, Japan-Iran energy diplomacy, Turkey’s currency crisis, Zionism, the Israeli settlement issue, Indonesia’s labor exports to the Gulf States, and Turkey’s Alevi issue. Their research topics covered many disciplines such as politics, finance, history and sociology, fully reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of area studies. To make students’ existing research more solid and complete, Wang encouraged them to expand their horizons both horizontally and vertically on the basis of existing research, and to enlarge the trans-regional and trans-time-and-space comparative dimensions. Sha Zongping, associate professor from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of Peking University, gave the students many suggestions in terms of clear definitions and detailed discussion. He hoped that the students could give full play to creativity, discover new perspectives and grasp new trends in existing research. Wang Suolao, deputy director of PKUIAS and associate professor from the School of International Studies of Peking University and Sha also offered their commentary on the presentations at the end of the sub-forum.
At the Russia and Central Asia Sub-Forum, students choosing Central Asian topics discussed many issues such as the political and social difficulties in Kyrgyzstan, China-Uzbekistan public diplomacy, and Kazakhstan’s aging population, while others mainly focused on Sino-Russian educational cooperation, the spread of traditional Chinese medicine in Russia, Russia’s vaccine diplomacy, Russia’s party politics, Russia’s urban governance, Russia’s economic relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the founding of the Warsaw Treaty. The variety of topics reflected the diversity of area studies. Based on the academic nature of the students’ papers, Zhuang Yu, assistant professor from the Department of History of Peking University, affirmed their research results and offered professional revision suggestions. Wang also shared many practical skills on topic selection and exposition while evaluating the papers’ completeness and suitability for publication. Zhuang and Wang offered their commentary on the presentations at the end of the sub-forum.
At the closing ceremony, Wang expressed sincere congratulations to the PhD students for their progress. He encouraged them to make persistent efforts and be more diligent in thinking and writing, so as to do better work next year.
Serving as a platform for discussion and presentation, this forum promoted exchanges between area studies PhD students from various universities and greatly inspired them during an excellent meeting of minds. It was of great significance for cultivating area studies talent and building an academic community.
