Across cultures and centuries, emotions have been expressed, encoded, and preserved in both texts and images. Recent advances in affective computing now offer new opportunities to study these emotional traces at scale. This talk examines how computational approaches to emotion—from early dictionary- and rule-based techniques to contemporary deep learning and large language models—have expanded the analytical possibilities for historical research. Applications in historical psychology will be discussed, demonstrating how AI-driven analysis of premodern texts and historical images can illuminate long-term patterns in collective emotions and cultural mindsets. By integrating computational methods with humanistic interpretation, the talk considers both the potential and the limitations of using artificial intelligence to reconstruct aspects of emotional life in the past.

As China expands its global influence, it simultaneously grapples with economic slowdowns and tightens its governance system at home. These global and domestic trends reinforce each other, sharping business environments, foreign and security policies of the Global South, and the political, economic, and cultural landscapes of many countries. Traditionally, China Studies examined international relations and domestic affairs as separate domains. Today’s complex global environment, however, demands a different approach, one that integrates both. How do China’s domestic policies shape its external behaviour? How do China’s overseas activities feed back into domestic policies? Understanding these connections and circulations matters for everyone from policymakers and diplomats to business leaders and cultural practitioners. Global China Studies offers a practical framework for addressing these questions. It examines how diverse actors interact and compete for influence: Chinese government agencies and companies, host governments and communities, international organisations, and civil society groups. Who holds power and why? How do political, economic, and cultural institutions and norms enable or constrain them? What drives cooperation or conflict? What new regional orders emerge from these interaction and competition? Answering these questions provides valuable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers alike. This symposium explores these interactions and power competition from two vantage points. First, looking from inside China, we examine how domestic policies and economic structures drive the country’s external behaviour. Second, looking from outside China, we focus on Southeast Asia as a key example, analysing through concrete cases how Chinese influence plays out and how local governments, businesses, and civil society respond. We cover the full spectrum of engagement: development aid, investment, diplomatic relations, and security cooperation. We also discuss what distinctive contributions Japanese scholarship can make to Global China Studies as an academic field. Japan occupies a unique position, bridging the Western principles of democracy and market economy with Asian relationship-centred approaches. What new perspectives or analytical framework can these characteristics bring to Global China Studies? This symposium focuses on advancing Global China Studies as an academic endeavour and explores the potential for intellectual contribution from Japan.

We find ourselves at a remarkable moment in global environmental governance. China actively supports green development on the global stage, while the US under the Trump administration rejects the Paris Agreement and actively opposes the development of renewable energy and electric vehicles. Professor Alex Wang of the UCLA School of Law will introduce his new book, Chinese Global Environmentalism, which examines how China came to embrace green development and how it promotes a developmental form of environmentalism that differs from Western conceptions. China’s approach promises to advance certain global environmental and governance norms, while reshaping others in ways that will continue to create tensions and conflict around the world. He will share case studies that shed light on China’s approach, including Chinese green investment in Chile, environmental conflicts in Kenya, hydropower development in Southeast Asia, global climate negotiations, and Chinese dominance in clean technology development. This event is co-sponsored by the APEC Study Center at Columbia University Alex Wang is professor of law at the UCLA School of Law and the Walter and Shirley Wang Endowed Chair in US-China Relations and Communications. He is also the faculty co-director of UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. His research focuses on US-China relations and the interaction of environmental law and governance institutions in China, the United States, and other countries. He is a member and former fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He serves on the board of the Environmental Law Institute and is a co-chair of the academic advisory committee for the California-China Climate Institute, a collaboration between the State of California and China on climate change law and policy. Professor Wang was previously a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the founding director of NRDC’s China Environmental Law & Governance Project. He was a Fulbright Fellow to China in 2004. He holds a BS in biology from Duke University and a JD from New York University School of Law.

We continue our speaker series about Taiwan’s status in the world with a look at its relationship with the European Union. None of the EU’s twenty-seven member states has diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but nineteen member states and the EU itself have opened quasi-embassies there and the EU holds a ministerial-level trade and investment dialogue with its government. In recent years, as tensions with China have heightened over trade disputes and the war in Ukraine, the EU Parliament has increasingly emphasized Taiwan’s shared democratic values and their similar experiences living with a powerful, authoritarian neighbor. Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, a scholar who divides her time between Brussels and Taiwan, will unpack the drivers and limitations of Europe’s affinity for Taiwan. *Please note this event was originally scheduled for March 10. Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy is an affiliated scholar at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, adjunct assistant professor at National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan, and visiting fellow on EU-Southeast Asia relations at the Martens Centre. Based in Taiwan since 2020, she has worked as a geopolitical analyst and academic, expanding her regional network and deepening her expertise in the Indo-Pacific. Her work on Taiwan’s internationalization, viewed through a European lens, places particular emphasis on Southeast Asia and India—key regional partners for Europe. From 2008 to 2020, Dr. Ferenczy served as a political advisor in the European Parliament, focusing on European foreign and security policy and human rights in the world. She is the author of Europe, China, and the Limits of Normative Power (Edward Elgar Publishing 2019) and Partners in Peace. Why Europe and Taiwan Matter to Each Other (Palgrave Macmillan 2024). In addition to her academic roles, she is associated research fellow at the Institute for Security & Development Policy (ISDP Stockholm), head of the Associates Network at 9DASHLINE (London), fellow at Agora Strategy (Munich), and a regular commentator in international media.

We are pleased to invite you to a thought-provoking discussion that explores China in Africa paradigm in a comparative perspective with India. While much attention has been centered on China in Africa and Global China as a lens through which to examine changing patterns of investment and infrastructure in Africa, this panel puts the China in Africa paradigm in a comparative perspective with India, which has longstanding commercial and trade ties with East and South Africa. This online panel, co-sponsored with the Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies of The New School, will assess Indian and Chinese engagements in Africa through the lens of technology transfers, skills upgrading, educational exchanges, and knowledge flows. Participants will explore patterns of expertise and technology transfer, higher education partnerships, cross-border research collaborations, and supply chains, among other forms of engagement between Chinese and Indian organizations with African counterparts Register here.