Research: A pangenome approach to investigating biodiversity of birds in China
Scott Edwards, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
$50,000
Biodiversity worldwide faces increasing threats from human-driven change. Understanding its genetic basis is essential for predicting and mitigating impacts. China, with its exceptional biodiversity shaped by diverse climates and topographies, provides a vital setting for such research. While Chinese collaborators have long studied avian adaptation to environmental extremes using genetic tools, genomic diversity in birds and other species remains under-explored. Advances in long-read sequencing and pangenome approaches now enable more complete catalogs of genetic variation, including structural variants that play key roles in adaptation, gene regulation, and resilience to climate change. Building on this, Professor Scott Edwards and his team will conduct a collaborative project with partners in China to investigate genomic diversity and adaptation in two bird species: the Common Rosefinch (Carpodacus erythrinus) and the Eurasian Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus). By integrating cutting-edge genomic tools with biodiversity research, this project will provide novel insights into avian evolution, strengthen international collaborations, and generate foundational data for larger, externally funded projects, benefiting both evolutionary science and biodiversity management.
For an update on Scott Edward’s grant, please read, “Invaluable Encounters in Scientific Collaboration”.
Research: The Just Coal Transition in China: Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Shanxi Province
Henry Lee, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy
$47,516
Seventy percent of China’s coal comes from Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, and Shaanxi, making these provinces central to achieving a just transition from coal to renewable energy. Over the past two decades, China has launched numerous policies to retrain workers, close smaller mines, attract new industries, and support local economic transformation, with more than forty central government directives and dozens of provincial initiatives. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) even created a special pilot program in 2020, allocating 2.4 billion RMB to six cities for community relocation, infrastructure, and public services. Despite these efforts and substantial subsidies, progress has been limited: worker retraining, community relocation, and land reclamation remain inadequate, and public consultations consistently highlight lack of funding and poor local implementation. This research project seeks to understand why government measures have achieved so little by sending two researchers to Inner Mongolia and Shanxi to interview policymakers, enterprise officials, organizers, and scholars. Collaborating with Tsinghua and Georgetown universities, our team will analyze national and provincial policies and produce papers that will contribute to a forthcoming book on China’s coal transition, offering insights into the challenges of managing workforce and community change in resource-dependent regions.
Conference: Disparities of Care for the Elderly in Rural China: A Social Technology Approach
Arthur Kleinman, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology
$50,000
China has made major progress in poverty reduction and welfare expansion, but rapid population aging—especially in rural areas—poses urgent eldercare challenges. Over 120 million rural Chinese are over age 60, making up nearly 24% of the rural population compared to 15.8% in cities, and they face compounded disadvantages: rural incomes are only 40% of urban levels, and rural elders experience higher rates of functional limitations and lower survival. This project addresses the underexplored problem of rural eldercare disparities using a Social Technology approach developed through global aging research. In collaboration with leading scholars from Harvard, the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China, and top Chinese universities, Professor Arthur Kleinman proposes two conferences to advance understanding and solutions. The first will provide a multidisciplinary analysis of rural eldercare, with case studies on vulnerable groups such as elders with chronic illness, social isolation, financial hardship, low literacy, or minority backgrounds. The second will analyze current policies and programs, focusing on gaps in policy implementation, rural medical services, long-term care delivery, and innovations to improve care. Together, these conferences aim to inform evidence-based policymaking to strengthen rural eldercare in China, with implications for other rapidly aging societies worldwide.
Conference: Landscape Fieldwork in China
Gareth Doherty, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture
$45,027
Landscape fieldwork offers a way to understand landscapes through lived experiences and relationships with humans, non-humans, and materials, combining the analytical tools of landscape architecture with ethnographic methods from anthropology, geography, and social science. While central to landscape architecture practice, fieldwork is more explicitly taught in China than in Western programs, where it is rarely theorized, despite its shared relevance across disciplines like ecology, architecture, and anthropology. Importantly, fieldwork is not only descriptive but also prescriptive, shaping how landscapes are ultimately designed and built. Professor Gareth Doherty proposes a conference in Shanghai that will convene landscape architects, anthropologists, geographers, and practitioners who conduct fieldwork in the landscape, aiming to examine its essential practices and cross-disciplinary value. By unpacking how fieldwork informs design and construction, the conference will establish a foundation for an edited volume, Landscape Fieldwork in China, advancing theoretical and practical understandings of this critical yet underexplored aspect of design education and practice.
For an update on Gareth Doherty’s grant, please read, “Fieldwork Reimagined: Insights from the Landscape Colloquium“.
Conference: Youth Public Health Symposium
Liming Liang, Professor of Statistical Genetics
$22,000
Public health, unlike medicine that treats disease, focuses on prevention and improving quality of life through research, policy, and organized action. Public health is gaining growing attention in China, the world’s second-largest economy, particularly in areas such as environmental health, nutrition, and urban health. Academic exchange between U.S. and Chinese students and scholars around public health will help inform effective policies in both China and the United States. Since 2016, Professor Liming Liang has organized multiple public health symposiums in Shanghai and Boston, supported by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard China Fund, and the Harvard College Association for US-China Relations (HAUSCR), demonstrating the high impact of this model for educating Harvard Students and their counter parts in China. In 2023, Professor Liming Liang plan to host two major symposiums. The first one will be held in Boston in collaboration with HAUSCR, modeled on successful 2018–2019 programs. and the second one will be in Shanghai, with support from HSPH alumni. These efforts aim to strengthen global public health education.
Conference: Tools of the Trade Conference
Peter Bol, Charles H. Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
$2,000
Professor Peter Bol will spearhead an international conference on the transition from print to digital tools, databases, and platforms in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Buddhist studies, co-sponsored by the several research institutes and libraries concerned with East Asia at Harvard.