China Centre online seminar: Living on the seams of several distinct state socialist projects and their fragmented aftermaths, residents of northeast China have come to understand the idea of ‘progress’ in a variety of Chinese-, Soviet-, and Korean-inflected ways over recent decades. This borderland region therefore presents a compelling location from which to study how senses of linear temporal advancement may feed into local and national identities, and relationships among cross-border neighbours. Drawing on research for his current book project, as well as an earlier book, Mirrorlands, about life along the China-Russia border, Ed Pulford will explore in this seminar the diverse ways in which senses of time and history figure in relations among Chinese, Russian and Korean people here.

Ed Pulford is an anthropologist with research interests in the past and present of socialism, transnational and cross-border connections across Asia, and northeast Asian indigenous peoples. He completed his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 2017, and before joining the University of Manchester in 2020 held postdoctoral research positions at Hokkaido University in Japan and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.