Seminars

Speaker: Dr Xuyan Lou, School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China
Date: Thursday 1 December 2022

Abstract: This paper provides the first causal estimates on the peer effects of newcomers in China’s middle schools. We define newcomers as students arriving in the local county/district from other counties/districts during their middle school entrance. Using the data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS), we exclude the self-selection by exploit the within-school random assignment of students to classrooms. Our findings indicate that having a higher proportion of newcomers in the classroom reduces math, Chinese, English and cognitive test scores of non-newcomers. We then show that the spillover effects of newcomers with and without local Hukou on non-newcomers with local Hukou are significantly negative, whereas we do not find strong evidence of negative spillovers from non-newcomers without local Hukou. The worse classroom environment and worse inter-group relations are the main channels for negative peer effects of newcomers.

Biography: Xuyan Lou is an assistant professor in the School of Economics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. She graduated with a PhD in Economics from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2018. Her research field is applied microeconomics, including labor economics, health economics and Chinese economy. Recently Xuyan published her research in Journal of Labor Economics and Journal of Comparative Economics.

Speaker: Dr Xiyi Yang, School of Entrepreneurship and Management, ShanghaiTech University; Shanghai, China
Date: Thursday 10 November 2022

Abstract: Since the mid-twentieth century, big-science research infrastructure (RI) has become an indispensable component in modern scientific research. Using data of 1.8 million scientific publications and employing a difference-in-differences design, we estimate the causal impact of a major RI, Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), on China’s indigenous scientific publications by domestic scholars from 1998 to 2015.

We find that for affected scientific disciplines, the establishment of SSRF caused a 40.1% and 16.2% increase in the number and percentage of high-impact indigenous publications, and a 16.9% increase in the average impact factor of indigenous publications. Combined, our findings suggest that SSRF has led to a quantitative and qualitative growth of China’s indigenous science. Such findings have important implications for public policy design and a better understanding of China’s rise as a formidable global power in science and technology. The study also addresses the concern that China lacks originality and indigenous innovation capability.

Biography: Xiyi Yang is currently working as an assistant professor and Principal Investigate at the School of Entrepreneurship and Management, ShanghaiTech University, an affiliate of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Hong Kong in 2015, and her Bachelor in International Shipping and Logistics from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2011.

Xiyi has broad research interests in topics related to economic geography, geography of science and innovation, and sustainability. Her works have been published in journals including Journal of Economic Geography, World Development, and Asia Pacific Journal of Management. Her book on the emergence of big-science research infrastructures in China has been published by Xinhua Publishing House in 2021.

Speaker: Mr Wei Jiang, School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China
Date: Thursday 27 October 2022

Abstract: Improving public hospital efficiency is critical to maintaining and improving the quality of healthcare service the public sector provides. As most Chinese hospitals are publicly owned, it is essential to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of hospitals in the public sector to keep their services to the highest possible standard.

This paper assesses the efficiency of public hospitals at the county level in East China using a panel dataset from the National Health Statistical Information Report System between 2009 and 2015. We use Data Envelopment Analysis to estimate hospital efficiency, apply a Tobit Difference-in-Differences to evaluate the pilot reforms, and adopt propensity score matching to address biases caused by the selection of counties into the pilot program.

Hospitals in the pilot program are more efficient. Yet, contrary to the policy objective, pilot hospitals’ efficiency advantage has narrowed since the pilot reform. This is possibly due to the multitude of policy objectives of public hospitals and the scale over-expansion among publicly owned county hospitals. Local economic conditions, including industrial development and the size of local government expenditure, are positively associated with hospital efficiencies.

Biography: Wei Jiang is a PhD candidate in Economics at the school of economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). His current research interest lies in health economics, policy evaluation, and hospital management. Specifically, he wishes to combine casual inference techniques and efficiency measures to investigate the impacts of the health reform in China. He has published papers in: China CDC Weekly, and Chinese Health Service Management.

Speaker: Dr Tom Lane, School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China
Date: Thursday 6 October 2022

Abstract: Policies offering material incentives for Covid-19 vaccination have been widely used around the world as countries pursue the pressing objective of boosting immunity. This paper reports an experiment in China aimed at testing the effects of such interventions on vaccination willingness. We provide the first Covid-19 vaccine study to separately consider and directly compare the effects of both monetary and gift-based incentives, both of which have been commonly employed in practice.

Results from a sample of 1,365 individuals suggest that incentives in the range of 8-125 USD backfire, inducing lower vaccination willingness than simply offering vaccines for free. The effects of money and gifts of equivalent value do not significantly differ. We compare our results against the burgeoning literature on Covid-19 vaccine incentives, and demonstrate that the negative effects we identify are stronger than those observed to date in other populations.

Biography: Tom joined the School of Economics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China in March 2018 as an Assistant Professor, specialising particularly in the fields of experimental and behavioural economics. He is also a member of the Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics (CeDEx), a world-leading behavioural and experimental economics research group within the School of Economics at the University of Nottingham, where he received his PhD in 2017.

Tom is currently the Local Director of CeDEx China, a CeDEx offshoot at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. His work has covered a range of topics – including discrimination, social norms, happiness, religion and the transmission of information – and has been published in such journals as the European Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, Behavioural Public Policy, and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

Speaker: Professor Yaojun Li, The University of Manchester
Date: Thursday 26 May 2022

Abstract: Using data from Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS 2018), this paper analyses the impact of educational assortative mating on marital satisfaction of conjugal partners by using diagonal reference models.

The results suggest that the higher the level of educational homogamy, the higher the marital satisfaction for both spouses; that hypogamous marriage can significantly reduce the marital satisfaction of both spouses while hypergamous marriage has a positive effect on wife’s marital satisfaction; and that there are clear gender differences of educational impacts on marital satisfaction – for wives, the larger the differences between their own and the husband’s educational levels, the stronger the negative effect on their marital satisfaction whereas short-range hypergamy increases their marital satisfaction; for husbands, only long-range hypogamous marriage has a negative impact on their own marital satisfaction. With the gender-gap reversal in education, hypogamy will increase, and the stability of marriage and marital satisfaction may face more challenges in the future. 

Biography: Yaojun Li is a Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, the University of Manchester, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).He obtained his MPhil and DPhil in Sociology at the University of Oxford.

His research focuses on social mobility and social stratification, with particular regard to class, education, labour market position, social capital and ethnic integration in Britain and China. He has published over 100 journal papers in English and has conducted around 20 research projects as PI or Co-PI funded by academic and government agencies in Britain, China, USA, Australia and Qatar.

His work has appeared in leading sociology journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, European Sociological Review, Research in Social Mobility and Stratification, and Sociology.

He has also written many official reports for government organisations and think-tanks. He has edited several books on Social Capital (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) and Social Inequality in China (with Yanjie Bian, World Science Publishing, 2019), and is writing a book on Social Mobility with Anthony Heath (Polity Press).

Speaker: Dr Yuanyuan Ma, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, China
Date: Thursday 7 April 2022

Abstract: How and why do household credit constraints affect fraud victimization when households face fraud schemes? Using the urban sample of a novel nationally representative data set on fraud victimization and household finance, we find that households facing credit constraints are associated with a higher probability of becoming fraud victims and suffer from higher economic losses from frauds than households not facing such constraints. Further analyses show that the personal discount rate and the need for social network expansion are critical pathways via which credit constraints affect fraud victimization.

Biography: Yuanyuan Ma is an Associate Professor in Wenlan School of Business at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Research Affiliate of IZA. Her research covers a wide range of topics in health economics, population economics and development economics. Her work has been published in: Journal of Health Economics, Demography, Health Economics, and World Development.

Speaker: Professor Dayong Zhang, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China
Date: Thursday 17 March 2022

Abstract: Emission trading schemes (ETS) provides a market mechanism to mitigate carbon emissions and has been introduced in many countries across the world. The fundamental idea of an ETS is to make carbon emission costly. As a consequence, firms undertaking cross-border expansions may have to take this extra cost into consideration when entering a market with ETS. In other words, cross-border Mergers and Aquasitions decisions and also the consequential financial performance may be affected.

Using a large sample of international firms between 2000 and 2019, we investigate this issue via a Difference-in-Difference (DID) approach. Our results show that introducing ETS in host countries lead to significantly less cross-border Mergers and Aquasitions deals and also lower financial performance. There are also clear evidences of cross-sectoral differences. In addition to the cost, we also find evidence that the establishment of carbon market can bring additional uncertainties, which contribute to the negative effects on cross-border Mergers and Aquasitions.

Biography: Dayong Zhang is a Professor of Financial Economics at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, China. His research interests cover energy finance, climate finance, banking and finance, and general economic and financial issues in emerging economies. He is the principle investigator of over ten research grants from the National Social Science Foundation of China (NSSFC), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), British Academy, and other sources.

He published over 100 articles in peer reviewed journals and is the Clarivate highly cited researcher in 2021. He is the co-founder of China Energy Finance Network, president of the Society for the Studies of Climate Finance (www.cnefn.com) in China, and vice president of International Society for Energy Transition Studies (www.isets.org).

Speaker: Dr Kun Jiang, Nottingham University Business School
Date: Thursday 25 November 2021

Abstract: This study examines the effects of China’s industrial clusters on its economic growth, urban-rural income inequality, and household income distribution in rural China. A density-based index (DBI) is developed to capture the unique features of such clusters in China.

We find that strong clusters and entrepreneurial clusters substantially enhance economic growth. Moreover, entrepreneurial clusters reduce urban-rural income inequality by increasing the income of rural residents.

Finally, we discover that industrial clusters increase rural household income and reduce income inequality simultaneously by providing relatively equal opportunities for rural households with members of disadvantaged groups to engage in nonfarm activities.

Biography: Kun is an associate professor in Industrial Economics. Her primary research fields are the economics of innovation and contract theory. Her research on the economics of innovation covers R&D financing and innovation and entrepreneurial clusters in China, and her research on contract theory aims to examine the effect of different contractual relationships on incentive problems using both theoretical and empirical approaches.

Speaker: Haoyu Liu, PhD Researcher, Nottingham University Business School
Date: Thursday 18 November 2021

Abstract: Social live streaming services (SLSSs) is a new and interactive form of internet-based multimedia entertainment that has grown rapidly in popularity worldwide since 2011 (Needleman, 2015, Twitch, 2017). As one of the topics specific SLSSs, the sports live streaming platforms (SLSPs) enable sport fans to enjoy the sports events via an app at any location and anytime while share and affirm their devotion to a sport or players with other online viewers.

In addition, the profit model for the Chinese SLSSs industry is mainly divided into three types: value-added services (reward), traffic monetisation (advertising), and e-commerce. Compared with the general SLSSs and game platforms, SLSPs still mainly rely on rewards. Therefore, how SLSPs can attract viewers during the off-season and how SLSPs can stimulate consumption during live streaming are important questions. Finding solutions to these questions is one of the main focuses of the SLSPs’ now as it will enable them to build competitive advantages.

The current study aims to identify the engagement behaviours of sport events viewers over SLSPs platforms and uncover the perceived value through engagement behavioural experience based on a theory of Service-Dominant Logic. Using big data retrieved from China Sports, this research analyses 16,204 real-time messages and 5,540 virtual gifts sent on the final matchday of the International Table Tennis Federation World Tour Grand Final of 2019. In this study, firstly, the topic modelling analysis is applied to uncover the topics and related value providers that were most discussed by viewers. Then, the viewers are classified into different groups based on their engagement behaviours (viewing durations, gifting, and real-time messaging). Finally, a series of interviews with a representative sample of sports viewers from each group was conducted to obtain qualitative insights into the perceived value of these behaviours.

The findings have interesting implications for SLSPs marketers and other sporting event stakeholders, specifically in formulating effective operations and marketing strategies for improving viewer engagement and facilitating consumption behaviours.

Biography: Haoyu Liu is a PhD candidate in Operations Management and information systems at Nottingham University Business School. She obtained her MA and MSc at Beijing Sport University, China and the University of Nottingham, UK, respectively.

Her research interest includes sports management, customer behaviour, service ecosystem, value co-creation, social live streaming service, and social media analytics. For her PhD Thesis, she is working under the supervision of Professor Kim Hua Tan and Professor Kulwant Pawar. Haoyu Liu wishes to uncover the viewer's value-in-use through their behavioural experience at sports live streaming platforms, in order to help sport live streaming platforms set up operations and marketing strategies.

Speaker: Dr Junhong Yang, Management School, University of Sheffield
Date: Thursday 4 November 2021

Abstract: Using a panel of 555,124 Chinese industrial firms, we find that firm-level innovation is negatively associated with industry competition.

Our study provides clear identification of a causal effect of competition on innovation by using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach that relies on a plausibly exogenous shift in industrial openness to foreign investment and employing an instrumental variables (IV) approach that relies on a time-varying instrument for industry competition.

Further evidence shows that the negative effect is tempered in provinces with higher intellectual property rights (IPRs) protection while stronger in industries with higher external finance dependence (EFD). 

Biography: Junhong Yang is an associate professor in Finance at Sheffield University Management School. He currently serves as Director of MSc Finance and Accounting Programme. Prior to that, he held positions as an associate professor at SOAS University of London. Junhong has published widely in world-leading and international academic journals, focusing on the area of the Economics of Transition in China, Corporate Finance, Financial Technology and Social Media.

Junhong is also a Fellow of the Centre for Research into Accounting and Finance in Context (CRAFiC) and the Centre for Global Finance (CGF) at SOAS and an External Consultant at the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI). Earlier, he was also a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Finance in Croatia. He has been involved in different research proposals and projects, including the ESRC/UKRI/AHRC/BA grants.

View Junhong Yang's staff profile

Speaker: Dr Minghai Zhou, School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China
Date: Thursday 14th October 2021

Abstract: Differential population growths are fundamental drivers of migration. Surprisingly little empirical research probes the demography of migration. We are the first to systematically analyse the demography of China’s internal migration in 1996-2015. Specifically, we construct bilateral migration flows across Chinese prefectures and exploit the impact of over-time variations in cohort sizes induced by the Great Famine and China’s birth-control policies.

We find asymmetric impacts of “push” and “pull” demographic factors in determining cross-prefecture migration: while a growth of rural cohort sizes in the origin prefectures pushes out migrants, a decline of urban cohort sizes in the destination prefectures pulls in migrants. The push and pull effects of cohort sizes are magnified when origin and destination prefectures are physically and socially connected. We also explore the demographic impacts by skills of migrants, directions of flow, and reasons for migration.

Biography: Dr Minghai Zhou is currently an Associate Professor of Economics in the School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

His major research interests are labour economics, international economics and development economics broadly defined, including income distribution, labour unions, labour migration and CEO labour markets with a focus on China. He is also interested in general topics of the Chinese economy and China’s economic system.

His works have been published in international journals such as The Economic Journal, Journal of International Economics, and Health Economics and Chinese journals such as Economic Research Journal, Management World, and China Industrial Economics.

Speaker: Professor Stephen Morgan, Nottingham University Business School
Date: Thursday 6 May 2021

Abstract: Party General Secretary and President of China, Xi Jinping, has a dream to “rejuvenate” (fuxing) China. His goal is for China to become a wealthy and strong country (fuqiang guo) by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. While the future is unknown – and unknowable – we can identify the constraints on the pathway to China’s future.

This seminar will draw on my newly published book The Chinese Economy (Agenda, 2021). It will explore first the long-run change in economic history, focused on the period since 1978 but reaching back to the late Ming Dynasty. Second, the primary focus of the seminar will be on a major theme running through the book, China’s quest to develop innovative economy, which is essential to sustaining growth in the next few decades. Without innovation that can allow China to close the gap with the “frontier” advanced economies, growth in productivity will fall short and with that the capacity of the economy to increase living standards and address the big challenges of an ageing population and shrinking workforce, reducing energy consumption and achieving sustainable growth.

In short, it will fail to become an advanced economy. Although China of the eastern seaboard can strike many visitors as already an advanced economy, with sophisticated urban economies linked by highspeed trains and excellent expressways, large parts of the country resemble lower-middle or low-income economies. China has a long way to go still to catch up, which is not so much an economic problem as a political one. 

Biography: Stephen Morgan is Professor of Chinese Economic History in the Nottingham University Business School. He joined the University of Nottingham in 2007, originally in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, after 14 years at the University of Melbourne where he was Senior Lecturer in Asian Economic History in the Department of Management, the Faculty of Economics and Commerce. Between 2013 and 2020, he was seconded to the Nottingham’s China campus at Ningbo where he was Dean of Social Sciences (2013-16), Associate Provost for Planning (2016-18) and the Executive Director of the Nottingham China Health Institute (2018-20).

Professor Morgan’s research is focused on China’s economy from the eighteenth century to the present. He has published in the fields of economic and business history, international business and strategy, health and human welfare, and media, politics and society. In an earlier career, he was a journalist and editor for newspapers and news magazine in Australia and Asia, and first visited China as a reporter in January 1981. He was educated at Monash University, the Beijing Languages Institute, Nanjing University, the University of Hong Kong and the Australian National University. 

Speaker: Professor Alessandra Guariglia, The University of Birmingham
Date: Thursday 29 April 2021

Abstract: Using a panel of 224,604 Chinese firms over the period 2004-2009, together with a set of unique city-level financial development data, we document a positive and significant association between inventory investment and both interest-bearing loans and trade credit. Furthermore, we find that financial development encourages firms to change the way they finance their inventories away from trade credit and towards loans.

These effects are more pronounced after the 2007 property rights reform, as well as for privately-owned, small firms, with no political connections, located in coastal regions. Our results are robust to using a variety of different specifications and estimation methods.

Biography: Alessandra Guariglia is a Professor of Financial Economics at the University of Birmingham. She has been Head of the Department of Economics at that same university from 2012 to 2015, and Head of the Departments of Economics and Accounting & Finance at the University of Durham between 2009 and 2012. Prior to that, she has worked at the Universities of Nottingham, Kent, and Essex. She obtained her PhD from Boston University in 1995.

Her current areas of research include the links between macroeconomic activity and finance, firm behaviour under imperfect capital markets, the economics of transition in China, household saving and consumption decisions, and health economics.

She is an associate editor of the European Journal of Finance and has been associate editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance from 2011 to 2015. Her research has been published in journals such as the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, the Review of Finance, the Journal of Corporate Finance, and Social Science and Medicine.

Presenter: Professor Yu Xiong, Surrey Business School, The University of Surrey 
Date: Thursday 22 April 2021

Abstract: China is set to overtake the US to become both the world’s biggest spender on R&D and the UK’s most significant research partner. However, both of the two countries are facing increasing challenges in technology collaboration, caused by the Pandemic and Geopolitics.  It would be essential for academics and businesses to deeply understand the importance of collaboration, and continue carry on collaboration in new settings. 

This presentation will cover the recently relevant issues in both theories and practices, and demonstrate some successful China and UK recent partnerships in innovation. 

Biography:

Professor Xiong is Chair of Business Analytics and Associate Dean International of the University of Surrey, and this university-wide role enables him to work with the university's three faculties and more than 20 schools/departments on international collaborations.  He was recently appointed as the Director of Innovation and Commercialization by Surrey University.

Professor Xiong's research focuses on technology development, sustainable and technological issues in global supply chains.  He has published in leading international journals, including Nature Communications, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Production Economics, and Journal of Operational Research Society. 

He has been guest editors to the International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Technovation, International Journal of Technology Management, etc. He has helped the growth of more than 100 companies, and has brought in more than 26 million pounds investment to the UK's innovation projects.

For more information please view Professor Xiong's webpage.

Presenter: Professor Xiaolan Fu, University of Oxford 
Date: Wednesday 9 December 2020

Abstract: The emergence of intangibles has brought significant challenges for our understanding of capitalism and international trade. This paper develops a framework for the measurement of global trade that integrates trade in intangibles and trade in goods and services to analyse the global trade imbalance.

Through in‐depth discussions of the five modes through which trade in tangibles are carried out, it develops an integrated framework for the measurement of international trade. Applying this framework to the estimation of trade imbalance of a group of the world's top innovative countries, we see significant adjustments of their trade balance. The overall trade deficit of the United States reduces by nearly half of its size from USD763 billion to 390 billion in 2015, the year for which we have the latest trade in value‐added data.

The paper argues that the true picture of global trade imbalance is of much smaller scale than the traditional trade statistics suggest. Policy responses to rebalance should be discussed using a framework that fully incorporates different types of trade activities in the twenty‐first century. The findings also have significant policy implications for global trade imbalance and policy responses (e.g. US- China trade imbalance), as well as the new conundrum of globalisation.

Biography: 

Professor Xiaolan Fu is the Founding Director of the Technology and Management Centre for Development (TMCD), Professor of Technology and International Development and Fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include innovation and technology policy and management; trade, foreign direct investment and economic development. Her current research concerns innovation collaboration, digital technologies and inclusive development, knowledge transfer within and between organisations, and green innovation policy.

Xiaolan is appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to the Governing Council of the Technology Bank for the Least Developed Counties and to the Ten-Member High Level Advisory Group of the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism. She has published extensively in leading international journals. Her recent books include Innovation Under the Radar, China’s Path to Innovation, China’s Role in Global Economic Recovery, and The Rise of Technological Power in the South. She serves on the Editorial Boards of several international journals. Prof Fu has received the EFMD Gate2Growth 2005 'European Best Paper' Award, 2012 Emerald Outstanding paper Award, 2017 EURAM Annual Conference Best Paper Award, 2017 JCEBS Best Paper Award, 2018 International Business Review Best Journal Paper Award.

Xiaolan received large research grants from prestigious funding bodies including the European Commission, ESRC, EPSRC, British Academy, and the Cairncross Foundation. She has advised UNDESA, UNCTAD, UNIDO, the World Bank, OECD, European Commission, ILO, the Commonwealth Secretariat, UKTI and the Chinese government. Prof Fu serves on the Advisory Expert Group of the OECD Global Investment Forum and the DFID/ESRC Economic Growth Directorate (DEGP), and is President of the Chinese Economic Association (Europe) and CEA (UK) in 2010-11. She is also a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge and University of Tsinghua, and a Visiting Professor at Fudan University.

As a leading China expert, Xiaolan has participated in various interviews and panel discussions in the mainstream media, including BBC Newsnight, BBC News, BBC World News, BBC Radio 2, CCTV, CGTN, Sky News, TRTWorld, Arise News, People's Daily, China Daily and China Radio International.

Presenter: Dr Adam Zhuo Chen, University of Georgia and University of Nottingham Ningbo China 
Date: Thursday 5 November 2020

Abstract: Seventeen years after the SARS outbreak, with billions of lives around the globe being profoundly affected by and more than one million death attributed to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, disease prevention and public health has again been put into the spotlight.

This presentation will discuss China’s disease control prevention systems, its evolution over time, and its key components and structure. I will also provide a comparison between the public health systems in China and that in the US, with a particular focus on the emergency preparedness and response. I will also provide updates on the COVID-19 research efforts I have been involved with, including two surveys in China on how the pandemic has affected daily lives and a survey of the mental health status among Asian Americans. 

Biography:

Dr. Zhuo (Adam) Chen is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management, College of Public Health, University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, Georgia, USA; and Visiting Professor in Health Economics and Director of Academics, Centre for Health Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). Professor Chen earned his Ph.D. in Economics and M.S. in Statistics from Iowa State University. Before Dr. Chen joined academia in 2017, he was a senior health economist with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

His current research interests include health economics, economics of obesity, mental health, genomics, and social determinants of health. He is a recipient of the CDC Excellence in Social and Behavioral Science Research Award in 2013. He served as the President of the Asian Pacific Islander Employees of CDC/ATSDR during 2014-2016 and was awarded the Civilian Award of Excellence in Diversity by the Federal Asian Pacific American Council in 2016.

He has served as President of the Chinese Economists Society during 2017-2018 and President of the China Health Policy and Management Society (2016-2018). Dr. Chen serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Family and Economic Issues, the Chinese Economy, and the China CDC Weekly. 

His personal webpage is: https://www.zhuochen.net/.

Presenter: Professor Lixian Jin (University of Nottingham Ningbo China)
Date: Thursday 20 February 2020
Venue: B19 Xu Yafen Building, Jubilee Campus

Abstract: This talk will present a cognitive linguistic research method – elicited metaphor analysis - with data and findings from studies of cultures of learning in different countries to show how the importance and, arguably, the necessity for researchers, teachers and students to know their own (and others’) cultures of learning in order to perform well and teach or learn successfully, especially in contexts of internationalizing higher education. Cultures of Learning is a concept used to analyse how teachers and students perceive and feel about preferred learning styles; their expectations and beliefs about teachers and students; their interpretations and evaluations of achievements and how a good class is expected to be organized and managed, etc. It is vital to understand the nuances of different cultural learning practices and how they may be envisaged and interpreted, adapted or resisted by different groups of participants so that we can really put learners in the centre of teaching and learning.

It is a challenge – especially in contexts of increasing cultural and educational diversity in university participation - for both staff and students to comprehend what teachers and students expect directly and indirectly from each other and from their universities. Elicited metaphor analysis method is used as an applied research method to explore the insights of different groups of participants. This qualitative research method has been applied to studies in education, language disability, healthcare, business/management and leadership settings. It can also yield quantitative outputs when a large quantity of elicited metaphors and entailments are collected. It is hoped that the use of this research method can enhance the reliability and validity of social science findings by gaining access to participants’ voices, visions and values.

Biography: 

Dr. Lixian Jin is Chair Professor in Applied Linguistics and the Head of School of English (2016-19) at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, after being Chair Professor in Linguistics and Intercultural Learning and having worked at a British university in the UK for 23 years. She has taught and published in linguistics, English language teaching, intercultural communication, qualitative research methods and clinical linguistics and assessments; and led international research teams in Britain, Singapore, Malaysia and China.

Currently she is leading three externally funded projects, as a partner team leader for an EU funded project on Intercultural learning, a PI for the Royal Academy of Medical Sciences on language disability and a PI for the Ministry of Education in China for an ERP (Event-Related Potentials) study on child language acquisition. She has conducted many school and university English teacher training workshops over the past 25 years in the UK, China and worldwide; and to healthcare professionals on intercultural communication in the UK invited by the Royal Colleges of Speech and Language Therapists, Surgeons, Nursing, Midwives, etc.. She has over 120 publications focusing on researching cultures of learning, intercultural communication, metaphor and narrative analysis and bilingual clinical assessments.