Why Chinese Studies?

Chinese Studies at Trinity takes a global and contemporary perspective on Chinese language, history, politics, culture and society, grounded in China’s fascinating past with an eye to the future. In this Asian Century, China is a critical player on the world stage – as the second largest economy in the world, it is hard to over-estimate its future importance. China has one of the richest continuous cultures in the world, dating back some 3,000 years, and Mandarin is one of the world’s most commonly used languages.

The fact of China’s re-emergence as a geopolitical, ethical, cultural, scientific, economic and commercial superpower is well known in Europe. Demand for graduates with multidisciplinary experience and training in China-specific areas of expertise has intensified nationally and worldwide. Deep and informed knowledge of China offers a wide range of potential career prospects, and graduates of this programme go on to work in key areas related to engagement with China and the Chinese-speaking world in the international arena.

The Trinity Centre for Asian Studies is involved in innovative world-class research in the field of Chinese Studies, including scholarship on Chinese civil society (especially in the cities of Shanghai and Hong Kong), the concepts of childhood and girlhood in China, Natural Language Processing, digital nativism amongst Chinese millennials, multilingualism, language use in Chinese society and the Chinese diaspora, and the spread of Chinese language teaching and testing across the globe.