Chinese Studies at the University of Zurich

At the BA-level, Chinese Studies in Zurich provides training in a broad-ranging spectrum of basic knowledge in the areas of language, literature, history, philosophy, society and media, with reference to the pre-modern and modern periods. Alongside subject-knowledge, foundational theories and methods of research in the humanities are taught. Students should also learn to formulate and work on themes and questions with the help of original-language sources. In the research oriented degree programs (MA, doctorate), the focal points of the two Chairs lie in the following areas:

Chair of Modern China (Prof. Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt)

Professor Mittelstaedt's research and teaching center on the political system of the People's Republic of China. He examines how authoritarian institutions are built, governed, and legitimized, with a particular focus on the role of the Chinese Communist Party. His work is organized around two main areas: first, he analyzes the Party's internal organization, disciplinary mechanisms, and modes of governance, as well as its growing influence on domains such as law, the economy, and foreign policy. Second, he investigates how the Party shapes, controls, and defends cultural and historical narratives against alternative interpretations. He is also interested in how state and societal actors compete over meaning — for instance, in debates surrounding ideology, history, and national identity. His overarching aim is to understand how political power reproduces itself in an authoritarian system through narratives, institutions, and everyday practices.

Chair for Traditional China (Prof. Wolfgang Behr)

Research interests of the Traditional China Chair include the historical linguistics of Classical Chinese, etymology, dialectology, paleography and Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics, pre-imperial archeology, textual and cultural history, rhetoric, as well as conceptual history and the history of science in premodern China.
Staff at the traditional China chair are currently engaged in research on Chinese philosophy and the history of philosophy, Buddhist logic, epistemology and hermeneutics, historiography, medieval history of religions and edition philology, formal structures of Tang poetry, complex writing systems in China, concepts of space and aesthetic etc.