Dr Ping Jin

Ping Jin is an Associate Professor in the School of Cultures and Communications at Communication University of Zhejiang (CUZ). She also holds an institutional position as Head of the Department of Bilingual Broadcasting and Communication at CUZ. She received her PhD in Education from Northwest Normal University. From 2013 to 2015 she completed her postdoctoral research project at Zhejiang University with the title: Seeing the Past into the Present Chinese Sacred Space: A Research Report from Historical Places on Zou-Lu Region. This research investigates perception of space, and relations of space-time in social transformation. She focuses in particular on the integration of tangible and intangible heritage in landscape and archaeological sites. She further explores how pre-modern Confucian scholars created moral virtues from the study of landscapes and topography, and generated new meanings in space-time. In so doing, a Chinese vision of historical space and place is generated which shows how the past and the present converge to create a sense of the eternal which is diffused like the soul of Confucius, and the way of the Dao as self-cultivation both ancient and modern. It is anticipated that my study will form the incentive for the preservation of heritage sites and landscapes in the province of Shandong where the descendants of Confucius and Mencius now live.

Ping Jin’s present research interest focuses on the critical inheritance and innovation of cultural/civilisational traditions and how these may resolve contemporary cultural and educational predicaments in contemporary China. She concentrates in particular on the practices of language and memory to create place-based Confucian heritage studies and material culture utilising perspectives from anthropology, human geography, Chinese Classics, philosophy and linguistics.