YCAR helped to strengthen York University’s connection with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) earlier this summer at a joint workshop held in Toronto.

The two-day workshop, Youth, Diversity and Social Development in the Multicultural Metropolis, featured presentations by YCAR and CASS scholars.

“Cities are sites of intense social, economic and cultural change, and young people are at the forefront of these transformations. This workshop addressed some of these processes through the juxtaposition of Canadian and Chinese contexts,” said Philip F. Kelly, YCAR Director

This workshop was the second in an ongoing series of academic engagements between the two institutions that began in 2011.

The workshop was made possible with the support from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Liberal Studies, Office of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation, Office of the Associate Vice-President, York International, and YCAR.

Presentations included topics that ranged from the education mobility of Chinese youth to daily encounters between young Hans and Uyghurs in Urumqi, Xinjiang, and social attitudes of youth and their determinant factors in China to Kung Fu, culture and youth identity in Toronto.

Representing CASS at the workshop were: Chen Guangjin (Director General, Institute of Sociology), Tian Feng (Institute of Sociology), Lu Peng (Institute of Sociology), Zheng Shaoxiong (Institute of Sociology), Du Qianping (Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology), Niu Jianlin (Institute of Population and Labor Economics) and Zhang Lihua (Bureau of International Cooperation, CASS).

YCAR Associates participating in the workshop as presenters, panelists or discussants included: Elena Caprioni (Asia Business and Management Programme), Kabita Chakraborty (Children’s Studies), Gregory Chin (Political Science), Elena Chou (sociology), M. Bernie Frolic (Political Science, ABMP), Susan J. Henders (Political Science), Philip F. Kelly, Ann H. Kim (Sociology), Lucia Lo (Geography), Guida Man (Sociology), Colin McGuire (Ethnomusicology) and Lorna Wright (Schulich School of Business).