Prof. David Alexander PALMER

Biography

• One of the world’s leading authorities on religion, modernity and politics in the contemporary Chinese world, now pioneering the extension of these fields to trans-Asian frameworks
• Plan to explore the other side of the coin: how Chinese cultural modernity spreads on the Belt and Road, and how local communities respond, appropriate, and influence it
• RFS project — to assess the nature and dynamics of Chinese soft power in the context of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), by using ethnographic methods to identify the factors which, in local contexts, enhance or restrain the socio-cultural influence of “Chinese modernity”
• Awards and Honours:
  • RGC Research Fellow (2020)
  • Edward Bruner Prize for the best book on the Anthropology of Tourism (2019)
  • Joseph Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies (2013)
  • PROSE Award (American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence) (2011)