Current projects

Here you can find an overview current research projects being conducted at the Sinology department in Würzburg.

The EU-funded project Remote Ethnography of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is a collaboration between Rune Steenberg (Palacký University, Olomouc), Vanessa Frangeville, Université libre de Bruxelles) and Björn Alpermann (JMU Würzburg) and started in January 2023. (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03-01 PROJECT 101079460)

Six years after the explosion of mass incarceration of minoritised people in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a general picture of the atrocities has been established in global media, policy circles and beyond. However, due to a lack of access to the region this picture remains imprecise. This project addresses this issue by aiming to become a hub for state-of-the-art truth finding focussed research on XUAR. The project puts focus on methods of remote research, including online research, textual and image analyses, critical remote sensing techniques and interviews in diaspora and with people exiting China from the region. Besides collecting, storing, critically examining and updating information from XUAR, it is also a goal of the project to contribute to the development of remote research methods. We view remote research not as a substitute for but as a complementary approach to on-the-ground research, all having their own different advantages that can be used to balance out their respective weaknesses. Our goal is to develope our own approach which we call Remote Ethnography – a holistic approach that includes a wide range of different topics, material, observations and experiences that are brought together within an open analytical frame, the aim of which is to understand and include as many different perspectives and types of material as possible.

For an overview of current and completed dissertation projects by staff, doctoral students and associates of the Sinology department in Würzburg, please click here.