Forging ‘Permanent Order’ from Disorder in the Peoples Republic of China: National (in)security, Frontier Genocide, State Terror and a Sanctioned Academic
Politics of Disorder Research Group Inaugural Lecture
Monday 30th May 12:00 to 13:30pm, Bridge House BH0101, the University of Lincoln
Forging ‘permanent order’ from disorder in the Peoples Republic of China: national (in)security, frontier genocide, state terror and a sanctioned academic
Jo Smith Finley, University of Newcastle
In the very first inaugural lecture for the Politics of Disorder research group, Dr Jo Smith Finley will be giving an overview of her research on the Uyghur population in Xinjiang in Western China and their struggle against securitisation, human rights violations, and terror of the Chinese state, as well as her experience of being one of nine UK citizens sanctioned by the Chinese government.
Joanne Smith Finley joined Newcastle University in January 2000, where she is Reader in Chinese Studies. Her research interests have included the evolution of identities among the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, NW China, and in the Uyghur diaspora; strategies of symbolic resistance in Xinjiang; Uyghur women between Islamic revival and Chinese state securitization of religion; PRC counter-terrorism measures in Xinjiang as state terror; and political “re-education” in Xinjiang as (cultural) genocide. She is author of “Why Scholars and Activists Increasingly Fear a Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang,” Journal of Genocide Research, 2020 (DOI: 10.1080/14623528.2020.1848109), “Securitization, Insecurity and Conflict in Contemporary Xinjiang: Has PRC Counter-Terrorism Evolved into State Terror?” Central Asian Survey, 2019 (DOI: 10.1080/02634937.2019.1586348), and The Art of Symbolic Resistance: Uyghur Identities and Uyghur-Han Relations in Contemporary Xinjiang (Brill Academic Publishing, 2013); and co-editor of Language, Education and Uyghur Identity in Urban Xinjiang (Routledge, 2015) and Situating the Uyghurs Between China and Central Asia (Ashgate, 2007). Based on her three decades of expertise in Uyghur studies, she writes occasional op-eds for the international media (https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/now-we-dont-talk-anymore) and gives frequent interviews to investigative journalists, documentary filmmakers, and radio and television broadcasters. She serves as expert country witness in Uyghur asylum cases in the UK, Europe, the US and Canada, and advises legal firms, refugee support organizations, government departments, non-governmental organizations and think tanks.
Story submitted by Blaine Monaghan
bmonaghan@lincoln.ac.uk