College and top Chinese university agree to explore cooperation on criminology, heritage studies
Executives from the College of Arts and Social Sciences met their colleagues from Nanjing University's School of Social and Behavioural Sciences and pledged closer cooperation
The ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences and one of China’s ‘Ivy League’ universities have agreed to explore closer cooperation in the fields of criminology and cultural heritage studies as well as staff and student exchanges.
Three scholars from the School of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Nanjing University, 300km west of Shanghai, visited Canberra in late August as part of the Go8-C9 Research & Academic Leadership Executive Shadowing Program. A College delegation toured Nanjing in 2014.
“We were pleased to welcome our colleagues from Nanjing and learn more about how we can deepen our relationship,” College interim Dean, Professor Paul Pickering, said.
“Nanjing University is ranked the third best university by China’s Education Ministry, which makes it a good fit for Australia’s number one university for humanities and social sciences.
“We held promising discussions on sharing the College’s expertise in disciplines including criminology and heritage studies, as well as improving the application process for Nanjing University students to study at ANU.”
The Nanjing delegation was led by Dean and Professor Zhou Xiaohong, a sociologist, Deputy Dean Professor Wu Yuxiao, who specialises in social mobility, and Professor Fan Ke from the university’s Research Institute of Anthropology.
Professor Wu said areas for cooperation included collaborating with a Nanjing 2016 summer school on criminology, participating in its interdisciplinary research program and conducting research field work in Australia and China.
Nanjing hoped to use these as starting points, which could be expanded into such areas as gender studies, social attitudes and other fields, he added.
Research School of Humanities and the Arts Acting Head, Associate Professor Kylie Message, and Professor Darren Halpin, Acting Director of the Research School of Social Sciences, said they were keen to explore enrolling more Chinese students in heritage studies and criminology at the ANU.
Nanjing University dwarfs the ANU in student numbers – 31,000 total students compared to the University’s 22,000. Of these, there were some 1,500 full-time foreign students at the Chinese university, compared to 5,500 at ANU.
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