My China Story: Professor David Goodman
Through a photographical way, Prof. David Goodman, Director of the China Studies Centre, USYD, recounts his lived experiences and stories about China.
Through a photographical way, Prof. David Goodman, Director of the China Studies Centre, USYD, recounts his lived experiences and stories about China.
My China Story is a distinctive and impactful conversation series hosted by the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University to enable a deeper and wider understanding of the multifaceted and humanised China through sharing lived experiences and knowledge of China by Australian public figures. We are excited to announce that this new episode will feature the established China Studies scholar Professor David S G Goodman, Director of the China Studies Centre, University of Sydney.
Professor Goodman grew up in England. He studied politics and modern history at the University of Manchester, then went on to study Chinese language and Chinese politics at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He started teaching and researching Chinese politics and society first at SOAS, and then the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK. After moving to Australia, he has taught and researched at Murdoch University, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), the University of Sydney (twice), Nanjing University and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. He first visited China in 1976 and having realised he needed to learn Chinese better and live in China he studied first at the then Beijing Languages Institute (today’s Beijing Language and Culture University) and a postgraduate course in political economics at Peking University.
China has been the focus of Professor Goodman’s activities for over fifty years. He has taught Chinese society, politics, history and literature. His research has focused on centre-local relations and regional development in China; the political and social history of the Communist Party of China; and on social and political change at local levels in China, most especially configurations of class, and the sociology of entrepreneurship in contemporary China. Professor Goodman has also been an advisor in economic and government activities related to China. He has lived in Beijing, Taiyuan, Nanjing, Lanzhou, and Suzhou, and has undertaken research elsewhere in China. Professor Goodman was a PRC Ministry of Education Distinguished Overseas Academic based at Nanjing University, also teaching at Shanxi University, and Northwest Normal University 2012-2016. He worked at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou where he first established the Department of China Studies and was later Vice President for Academic Affairs.
The attraction of China to Professor Goodman has long been its diversity and localism and they are at the centre of Professor Goodman’s presentation in this episode of My China Story, reflected photographically, a unique way of recounting his lived experiences and stories about China.
