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Derek Hird supervises 6 postgraduate research students. If these students have produced research profiles, these are listed below:

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Dr Derek Hird

Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, Head of the School of Global Affairs

Derek Hird

Confucious Institute

LA1 4YW

Lancaster

Office Hours:

Michaelmas 2024: 

Friday 1-2pm, on Teams or in person at County Main B138.

Research overview

My research principally concerns gender and class in Chinese/Sinophone populations, with a particular focus on middle-class masculinities. I have also published on happiness in China. My most recent China-focused project looks at Chinese male beauty vlogging and makeup for men. More widely, I have also developed a research interest in critical pedagogy in modern languages and the future of languages and cultures as a sector, particularly involving its interdisciplinary interactions with STEM disciplines. I often approach topics from a wide-ranging cultural studies perspective, covering discourse and practice. Ethnographic, narrative and critical discourse methodologies frequently inform my data gathering and analysis.  

PhD supervision

I welcome PhD proposals taking a cultural studies approach to topics relating to Chinese/Sinophone men and masculinities, gender identities and relations more broadly, feminist activism and theory, class identities and social stratification, and health and wellbeing. I also welcome proposals on critical language pedagogy across different languages, informed by critical sociolinguistics, which employ e.g. decolonising and social justice approaches.

Current Teaching

CHIN100/101: Chinese in Context (Convenor)

CHIN233: Shaping Contemporary China: Moments and Movements

(Convenor)

DELC215: Language and Identity in France, Germany, Spain and the Sinophone World

DELC218: Thinking Queerness: LGBTQIA+ lives, identities and politics in contemporary thought and cultural production 

DELC331: Transnational TV Crime Drama: Armchair Detectives, Crime, Cultures and Circulation

DELC334c: Academic writing in a second language (Chinese) (Convenor)

DELC338: Spirits in the Material World: Cultures and Sciences (Convenor)

DELC372: Sinophone Literature and Film (Convenor)

DELC416: Academic and Professional Methods in Translation

DELC420: Translation Project

External Roles

Co-editor of the Transnational Asian Masculinities book series (Hong Kong University Press)

East Asian Studies representative, University Council of Modern Languages, 2017-2020

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