Alison Hardie is an Honorary Research Fellow of Leeds University, having retired in 2015 as a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies. She holds degrees in Classics from the University of Oxford and in Chinese from the University of Edinburgh, and a doctorate from the University of Sussex.

Roy Peachey is the author of six books, including The Race (Cranachan, 2021), a dual-narrative children's novel about Eric Liddell and a young Chinese-British sprinter, and Between Darkness and Light (Eyrie Press, 2019), a literary novel about a translator for the Chinese Labour Corps during World War I.

Speaker: Dr Andrew Law, Senior Lecturer in Town Planning, Newcastle University

2021 commemorates the centenary of Thomson’s death. There is an exhibition of his China photographs at Heriot Watt University, his alma mater, and Historic Environment Scotland has honoured him by erecting a plaque at his childhood home in Old Town Edinburgh.

Using the experience of the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing as a case study, Frances Weightman, of Leeds University, will attempt to give a preliminary overview of what seems to be most, and least, successful.