Hopkins-Nanjing Center Blog

MAIS student Nathan Rose relocated to Taipei, Taiwan for the second semester of his first year. As he navigates the complex task of building a community of friends abroad, Nathan reflects on his attendance at Easter mass in a Taiwanese church, and the shared community of faith that he encountered.    Last month was Holy Week. For those not familiar with Catholic traditions, Holy Week refers to a string of religious holidays starting with Palm Sunday and ending with Easter, as well as encompassing Good Friday. It is, canonically, one of the most important religious holiday (s) in the Catholic tradition, as this week is when Jesus’s death and resurrection is remembered and celebrated. It also represents the end of Lenten fasting. Lent is the traditional Catholic fasting period, in which practitioners are asked to either give something up or do something extra for a period of 40 days. In this way, Holy Week represents (canonically) the completion of one journey (the Lente...

Preparing for your studies at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center may seem intimidating - throughout the application process, and even after, you are asked about your research interests, focus, and career path. What if you are interested in many things? How do you find your one true passion? Or perhaps, how do you bring all your interests together and look at them through a truly interdisciplinary lens?  Rebecca Ash-Cervantes shares her experience.  If you’re perhaps an undergraduate student studying Chinese or language education –or someone with work experience aiming to pivot into international relations, I have some good news for you: Making the change from language studies and/or language education to international relations and economics isn’t the most obscure of transitions. If you look at the resumes of many HNC alumni, you’ll see English teaching and language tutoring as reoccurring themes, either in jobs they’ve held, or volunteer positions. Turns out a passion for language an...

Taylore Roth is an Economics & Trade Policy Analyst at the U.S.- China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). She attended the Hopkins-Nanjing Center as a Certificate student 2017-2018 and went on to receive a Masters in International Economics and Asian Studies (China) at Johns Hopkins SAIS in DC. She spoke with HNC student Grace Faerber about her HNC experience: Why did you choose to attend the Hopkins-Nanjing Center and pursue graduate studies in China? As I began to look for graduate schools, I knew I wanted to spend at least part of my graduate experience studying in China. While I had previously studied abroad in Chengdu and taught English in Beijing, I wanted a program that would build upon my previous experiences rather than replicate them. Whereas other IR-focused grad programs in China seemed to replicate my prior experiences of living within a conclave of English speakers and attending classes taught in English, the HNC offered something much more immersive. As ...

Dr. Han Xiuli, a Professor at Xiamen University School of Law, gave a lecture titled “The Expansion of Climate Change Issues in International Investment Law” at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center on December 17th, 2021.  In the beginning of the lecture, Dr. Han explained that as a law professor, she started to pay attention to how climate change will impact international investment law in the long run. It was important for Dr. Han to begin the lecture by bringing up the researchers who have proven the severity of climate change’s effects. In particular, she highlighted two of the 2021 Physics Nobel Prize winners, Shuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, who have proved that the increase in atmospheric temperature is significantly impacted by the carbon dioxide emitted by humans. In the international investment sector, it is clear that people have changed their investment behavior to mitigate and respond to the effect of climate change. In other words, international investments are increasingly t...