Welcome to Prof. Marc Matten

The ENP-China team is very pleased to announce the arrival of Professor Marc Matten (Erlangen University). Prof. Matten has elected to join the ENP-China team during his half-year sabbatical leave (1 September 2020-31 March 2021) to work on his project about “Scientists and their networks in the Cold War Era”.

Prof. Matten is a distinguished scholar who specializes on modern China. He received his training in Chinese studies at Bonn University (Ph.D., 2007). His work focused on the establishment of a national identity in China at the beginning of the 20th century (Harrassowitz-Verlag, 2009).

Prof. Matten has made extended research stays in China (1999-2000), in Japan 2001-02, 2004-06), and in Taiwan (2008-09), before teaching at Leiden University, then in 2009 taking up the chair of sinological studies at Erlangen University in the Institute of languages and cultures of the Near East and East Asia. His research interests reach beyond China.

His most recent book publications include a research monograph, Imagining a Postnational World — Hegemony and Space in Modern China (Brill, 2016) and an edited volume, Places of Memory in Modern China – History, Politics, Identity (Brill, 2011). He has published extensively in international academic journals.

in 2018, Prof. Matten was the recipient of a DFG project (2018-21) on “Production and consumption of authenticity – Politics of the past in the culture and creative industries in the sinophone realm”. Just before coming to Aix, he also learned that the Volkswagen Foundation had selected his ambitious new seven-year project about Chinese history books and their translation.