/ Research
Prof. Weber and Dr. Silvana Târlea in China
Prof. Ralph Weber and Dr. Silvana Târlea travelled to China at the end of October to conduct fieldwork for the project "European Studies in a Global Perspective".
As part of their project "European Studies in a Global Perspective", Prof. Weber and Dr. Târlea conducted elite interviews with academics at universities in Beijing and with researchers working in think tanks in the field of European Studies. The researchers were able to interview senior and junior researchers teaching or analysing issues related to European Studies. The established contacts with academics will pave the way for future interviews and surveys that they plan to conduct during the coming years.
Ralph Weber also attended a meeting of the Executive Board of the World Sinology Conference at the People's University of China and presented a paper at its scholarly meeting on "Understanding China: The Relevance of Sinologies" entitled "(How) Is Sinology about China? - On the Paradigm of Transculturality". Photographs and a report (in Chinese) of the Board Meeting and the conference are available online.
The goal of the project "European Studies in a Global Perspective" is to screen and evaluate European Studies around the globe, offering analyses from sociological, economic and political perspectives, and interrogating the concept of Europe researched, taught, and propagated throughout these varying contexts.
Prof. Dr. Ralph Weber is Assistant Professor for European Global Studies at the Institute for European Global Studies. His main research areas are: Methodological and conceptual aspects of multilingual and transcultural research, comparative philosophy, Chinese political philosophy, Chinese politics, and Confucianism. Prof. Weber is also President of the European Association for Chinese Philosophy (EACP) and board member of the Swiss Asia Society (Schweizerische Asiengesellschaft).
Dr. Silvana Târlea is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for European Global Studies and a member of the H2020 project EMU Choices. She is a political economist with an interest in education policies around the globe. Dr. Târlea also does research on the European financial crisis. Silvana was a Max Weber postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and a visiting fellow at the University of California at Berkeley before moving to Basel. She obtained her PhD in political science from the University of Oxford, Nuffield College in 2015.