Retreats

The Graduate School organizes one annual retreat for all PhD students where they can present draft chapters/articles for peer-review and in order to get advice from specialists in the field. The retreats are also open for supervisors. Specially invited guests will also be invited.

In addition, other retreats, such as writing retreats, are also organised.

The 2025 Spring Retreat 

8-11 June at Hotel Gässlingen in Skanör - 

(Arrival on 8th in the evening and departure in the afternoon of the 11th)

At the retreat we will discuss current research and challenges, including collaboration and exchange between scholars in different countries and using different languages. PhD students will also have an opportunity to discuss work in progress,

Confirmed keynotes include:

Professor Xiang Biao, Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Social Anthropology. After studying sociology at Beijing University, China he received his PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oxford, UK. He was Professor of Social Anthropology at Oxford before he joined MPI in 2021. Professor Xiang's book 自己作为方法 (Self as Method, co-authored with Wu Qi) was ranked the Most Impactful Book 2020 in China according to the website Douban. Through articles and interviews, his ideas regularly generate wide discussions in China and beyond. Professor Xiang’s work has been translated into Japanese, French, Korean, Spanish, German and Italian.

Dr Mika Toyota is a researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung. She received her PhD in Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hull in 2000, and has since worked as an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore and as a Professor at University of Rikkyo. Her research addresses issues of ageing, care and mobility in Southeast Asia and Japan. She is currently part of the project Changing the Feeling Rules: How Emotions Reshape Social Relations, c. 1700 to today where she studies the phenomenon of ‘lonely deaths’ in Japan.

Thomas White is a Lecturer in China and Sustainable Development. He received his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 2016. His thesis was based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Inner Mongolia since 2011. He is an Affiliate of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge. Thomas has previously worked at the University of Cambridge, and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. His first monograph, China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier, was published in 2024.

Application deadline: 29 November, 2024

• To the application form