Interdisciplinarity and the Future of Life

Thursday 7 May, 10pm Eastern / Friday 8 May, 10am China

Interdisciplinarity lies at the heart of Duke Kunshan University’s innovative curriculum for the 21st century. Recently DKU appointed James Miller, Co-Director of the Humanities Research Center to be its first Associate Dean of Interdisciplinary Strategy. Join Professor Miller and students from the HumanSpace+ research group as they embark on a series of conversations with leading theorists and practitioners of interdisciplinarity in the world today to explore how interdisciplinarity is tied to innovation and future of knowledge.

Ed Turner

The fourth conversation in this series is with Professor Ed Turner from Princeton University and focuses on the future of the life. Working extensively in both theoretical and observational astrophysics, Professor Turner has published more than 240 research papers with particular concentrations on topics including binary galaxies, dark matter, quasars, exoplanets, astrobiology and the origin of life.  Professor Turner is also a leader of the Breakthrough Starshot initative, which aims to develop a light-powered starship to journey to Proxima Centauri b, an exoplanet discovered in August 2016.

Continue reading “Interdisciplinarity and the Future of Life”

Interdisciplinarity and the Future of the Planet

Thursday 30 April, 9am Eastern / 9pm China
Zoom: 695-290-0771

Interdisciplinarity lies at the heart of Duke Kunshan University’s innovative curriculum for the 21st century. Recently DKU appointed James Miller, Co-Director of the Humanities Research Center to be its first Associate Dean of Interdisciplinary Strategy. Join Professor Miller and students from the HumanSpace+ research group as they embark on a series of conversations with leading theorists and practitioners of interdisciplinarity in the world today to explore how interdisciplinarity is tied to innovation and future of knowledge.

Thomas Bruhn

The third conversation in this series is with Dr Thomas Bruhn from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) at Potsdam University. Dr  Bruhn is a physicist who has been working transdisciplinarily at the IASS since 2012. His research initially focused on climate engineering and CO2 utilisation. In 2016 he began to co-lead the AMA (A Mindset for the Anthropocene) project together with Dr Zoe Lüthi on the question how the cultivation of mental qualities like mindfulness and compassion can contribute to sustainability. He has also been engaged in research on collective learning and co-creation in the context of political decision-making for sustainability since 2017. Dr Bruhn’s  ambition is to bring together a variety of stakeholders in reflexive processes that allow for the emergence of truly shared perspectives and action pathways for a context-specific implementation of specific sustainability targets.

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Interdisciplinarity and the Future of the Mind

Thursday 23 April, 10pm Eastern / Friday 24 April, 10am China
Zoom: 695-290-0771

Interdisciplinarity lies at the heart of Duke Kunshan University’s innovative curriculum for the 21st century. Recently DKU appointed James Miller, Co-Director of the Humanities Research Center to be its first Associate Dean of Interdisciplinary Strategy. Join Professor Miller and students from the HumanSpace+ research group as they embark on a series of conversations with leading theorists and practitioners of interdisciplinarity in the world today to explore how interdisciplinarity is tied to innovation and future of knowledge.

Evan Thompson

The second conversation in this series is with Professor Evan Thompson from the University of British Columbia and focuses on the future of the mind. Evan Thompson is a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He works on the nature of the mind, the self, and human experience. His work combines cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophical traditions. He is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2015); Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007); and Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Press, 1995). He is the co-author, with Francisco J. Varela and Eleanor Rosch, of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991, revised edition 2016). Evan is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

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Interdisciplinarity and the Future of Knowledge

Tuesday April 14: 10am Eastern, 10pm China
Zoom: 695-290-0771

Interdisciplinarity lies at the heart of Duke Kunshan University’s innovative curriculum for the 21st century. Recently DKU appointed James Miller, Co-Director of the Humanities Research Center to be its first Associate Dean of Interdisciplinary Strategy. Join Professor Miller and students from the HumanSpace+ research group as they embark on a series of conversations with leading theorists and practitioners of interdisciplinarity in the world today to explore how interdisciplinarity is tied to innovation and future of knowledge.

Simon Goldhill

The first conversation in this series is with Professor Simon Goldhill from Cambridge University. Professor Goldhill was the first director of CRRASH,  the Centre for Research in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cambridge University. During his tenure as director, CRRASH  became the world’s leading interdisciplinary research institute of its kind, employing over 40 postdoctoral researchers on a number of groundbreaking collaborative projects. Continue reading “Interdisciplinarity and the Future of Knowledge”

中国官方媒体正在失去公信力吗?

English

3月3日,在昆山杜克大学人文研究中心与杜克大学富兰克林人文学中心共同主办的在线谈论会“新冠病毒带来的人类、社会和政治意涵”上,杜克大学政治学教授梅勒妮·马尼恩 (Melanie Manion) 谈到了媒体公信力的问题。来自昆山杜克和杜克大学的师生以及《南华早报》美国分社社长参加了讨论。 Continue reading “中国官方媒体正在失去公信力吗?”

Freedom Lab: Launch Event

Date: March 26

Time: 9pm (China time) / 9am (US Eastern time)

Zoom Meeting ID: 344-318-9585

Hosted by the Lab’s faculty and student researchers, the launch will introduce the Lab, its objectives and research projects, as well as a series of exciting events for 2020.

The launch will conclude with a Keynote by Professor Geoffrey Harpham (Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute on Ethics, Duke University) on “Freedom and the Character of Scholarship,” followed by a Question and Answer session. This event will be recorded and posted on the Freedom Lab Website for all to view. Continue reading “Freedom Lab: Launch Event”

Report on The Coronavirus: Human, Social, and Political Implications

By Sarah Rogers, Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University

This post originally appeared on the Franklin Humanities Institute website.

In February 2020, after Duke Kunshan University closed its campus and shifted to online instruction in order to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19, a group of DKU faculty became residents at Duke University. These included two new residents at the Franklin Humanities Institute: James Miller, Associate Dean of Interdisciplinary Strategy and Co-Director of the Humanities Research Center at Duke Kunshan University, and Tim Smith, the Humanities Research Center Lab Manager. Continue reading “Report on The Coronavirus: Human, Social, and Political Implications”

Is China’s official media losing its authority?

By Xiaoxi Zhu
Student Media Center fellow
中文翻译

The story of Wenliang Li, the so-called whistleblower of the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis, was widely spread on Chinese social media when he died from the disease on Feb. 7. He was an ophthalmologist working in the Central Hospital of Wuhan, Hubei province, where the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed, and he was reprimanded for spreading “fake news” about the contagion in a WeChat group. Continue reading “Is China’s official media losing its authority?”

The Coronavirus: Human, Social and Political Implications

On Tuesday March 3, Duke Kunshan University Humanities Research Center in partnership with the Franklin Humanities Institute created a panel on the human, social and political implications of the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The panel consisted of two sessions. The first was an online Zoom presentation to DKU students, with nearly 200 total participants.

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