Faculty Advisor- Liu Wei 刘为

Professor Liu Wei began serving the China Center in 1996 as a regular guest speaker, and in 1997 he became an adjunct faculty member and student Faculty Adviser. Professor Liu Wei, a Chinese intellectual renowned locally and nationally for his forward—thinking and uncompromising individualism, teaches a cultural studies seminar on modern Chinese history in the fall and on Chinese nationalism in the spring. Professor Liu is currently the Academic Director and Advisor for students interested in contemporary Chinese politics.


Liu Wei on West Lake with students during orientation

Liu Wei once served in the Red Army during the Cultural Revolution, ending his military career as a staff sergeant in 1976. After working as the private secretary to the Provincial Minister, he entered university on an ex-serviceman's pension in 1978, where he majored in Chinese history with French as his second concentration. After seven years of graduate study and extensive research on eighteenth-century English political history at the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Liu completed a Ph.D. in History from Nanjing University in 1989. Soon thereafter, he began teaching as a lecturer of political science at the Department of Philosophy and Sociology at Zhejiang University. He then returned to the University of Edinburgh and completed his postdoctoral research on the history of late eighteenth-century Sino-British relations in 1992, before assuming the position of associate professor the following year at Zhejiang University, where he continues to teach world political history in the Department of Global Studies.

Returning to the United Kingdom in 2000, Professor Liu was appointed to the European Union—China Higher Education Commission as a Political Observer of the Scottish Parliament concerning devolution of the U.K. Professor Liu observed parliamentary process at his base in Edinburgh, as well as in Brussels, Cardiff, and Belfast.

Professor Liu is a major contributor to Conflicts and Reconciliation: Nations and Nationalism in Europe (1999) and author of History of Modern International Relations (2004).


"Historian Liu Wei, Ph.D." in an interview on CCTV

Professor Liu also continues to supplement his academic career with an intriguing vocation in television. For seven years, beginning in 1994, he worked for China Central Television as a part-time host of a literary review program and later hosted a program about local popular culture in Hangzhou on Zhejiang Provincial Television. Professor Liu continues to produce educational programs for television and his twenty-part series on World War II for China Central Television, Shaking the Earth: Sensational Stories from the Second World War, first aired on August 15, 2005.

In May, 2006, Professor Liu was invited to the China National Commission of the United Nations Educational and Scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO) by the Chairman of the Executive Board of UNESCO, Zhang Xinsheng, who also holds position in the Chinese government as Vice-Minister of Education. Liu Wei is one of only five academics and diplomats in China to form a special advisory subcommittee charged with drafting the next Five Year Plan for UNESCO. On June 21, 2006, at the inauguration of the new School of Media and International Cultural Studies at Zhejiang University, Professor Liu Wei was appointed chair of the new Department of Politics and Mass Communication.

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