Opening Session: Professor Gary Rawnsley – Aberystwyth University
Professor Gary Rawnsley is the first Chair of Public Diplomacy in the UK. He joined the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University in 2013. He was previously Professor of International Communications at the University of Leeds and Director of the Institute of Communications Studies. He was also the founding Dean and Head of International Studies at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo China (UNNC, 2005–2007). Professor Rawnsley has held visiting positions in Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan and is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College. He is book reviews editor of the Journal of International Communication and serves on the editorial boards of the Asian Journal of Communication, the American Journal of Chinese Studies and Media and Communication. Professor Rawnsley is also a member of the Soft Power Advocacy and Research Centre at Macquarie University and an External Fellow of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. His most recent publication is Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media (eds Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley, 2015). The keynote speech he gave at the 2015 EATS Conference is entitled “Making the invisible visible: Taiwan’s soft power and public diplomacy”.
Closing Session: Professor Chris Berry – King’s College London
Professor Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London. In the 1980s, he worked for China Film Import and Export Corporation in Beijing, and his academic research is grounded in work on Chinese-language cinema. Before he joined King’s College London, Professor Berry was Professor of Film & Television Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London (2004–2012); Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (2000–2004). He has been Visiting Professors in many universities, including University of Washington Chinese Film Summer School, held at the Beijing Film Academy (2006, 2007, 2008, 2011); University of Hong Kong (2007); Fudan University (2006); and Chinese University of Hong Kong (2006), etc. His books include Cinema and the National: China on Screen; Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: the Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution; Chinese Cinema, 4 vols,; Public Space, Media Space; The New Chinese Documentary Film Movement: For the Public Record; Electronic Elsewheres: Media, Technology, and Social Space; Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes; TV China; Chinese Films in Focus II; and Island on the Edge: Taiwan New Cinema and After. The keynote speech he delivered at the 2015 EATS Conference is entitled “Who’s invisible now? Taiwanese cinema and the anxiety of global (in)visibility”.