Messengers to the Land of Sinim: Swedish missionaries in China 1847-1951
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- RB01
About this event
Professor Fredrik Fällman will give a brief overview of the Swedish missionary enterprise and its particularities, and then go deeper with a few case studies.
More than 700 missionaries from Sweden worked in China from 1847-1951, most likely the largest per capita number of missionaries sent from any country. Only a few of the Swedish missionaries had higher education and their sending organisations were poor in comparison with some British or North American missionary societies. They often worked in more peripheral areas of China, but still represented modernity in their local setting.
Professor Fällman will discuss the Swedish missionary role in China, and address a few cases of Swedish mission to minorities (Tibetans, Mongols and Uyghurs) and some interesting political connections in Hubei province.
Video Recording
About the speaker
Fredrik Fällman (b. 1970, PhD Stockholm 2004) is an Associate Professor of Sinology and Senior Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. In 2022, he was elected a Member of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg.
Fällman focuses on three major research areas - religious life and policy in contemporary China, Chinese propaganda language, and the history of Sino-Western cultural exchange. Fällman was a Senior Research Fellow at City University of Hong Kong (2012-2013), a Distinguished Adjunct Researcher at Renmin University of China in Beijing 2010-2014, and a Researcher at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters History and Antiquities (at Stockholm University) from 2007-2011. Fällman was also a Board Member of the Institute of Sino-Christian Studies in Hong Kong from 2009-2018.
Chair: Dr Lars Laamann, Department of History, SOAS University of London.
Registration
This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required.
Please note that this seminar is taking place on campus and will not be live-streamed.
Organiser
Contact
- Email: sci@soas.ac.uk
Image by Jay via Unsplash
