This one day workshop, held at University College Dublin on 17 May 2024, develops international collaboration on zones of contact between the Russian Empire (1721-1917) and the Qing Empire (1636/1644-1912). These zones are, on the one hand, geographically defined borderlands in Central, Inner, and East Asia, and, on the other hand, cultural, intellectual, political, and economic spaces wherein people from these two empires (and beyond) met and interacted. The workshop seeks to generate conversation about local and regional entanglements, networks, and exchanges across these vast Eurasian territories. While conventional histories of the two empires have treated them as two separate political entities, the workshop aims to adopt transregional and transnational approaches to overcome the narrow and traditional idea of territory – and in doing so, to propose alternative spatial, economic, and cultural histories of the region that contribute to attempts to de-nationalise and de-territorialise the historiography.

Confirmed speakers:
- Sören Urbansky (Ruhr-Universität Bochum): “Yellow Peril in Vladivostok: The Chinese Diaspora in Russia and the Soviet Union”
- Yuexin Rachel Lin (Leeds): "Frontier activism, ‘rights recovery’ and international law: Early Sino-Soviet relations revisited”
- Meng Zhang (Vanderbilt): “Inter-ethnic commercial disputes on the Qing Inner Asian frontier”
- Eric Schluessel (George Washington): "Mazars, Merchants, and Immiseration: Pious Economy and Chinese Capital in Turn-of-the-Century Xinjiang"

We now invite proposals for papers of 15 minutes in length from PhD and Postdoctoral researchers. While the focus of the workshop lies on the Russian and Qing empires, papers may extend into immediate post-imperial timeframes if there are good reasons for doing so. If you are interested in participating, please send details of your name, affiliation, a short cv (max. 1-2 pages), a paper title and abstract (max. 300 words) to julia.schneider@ucc.ie and jennifer.keating@ucd.ie by 29 February.

Organisers:
Dr. Jennifer Keating, School of History, University College Dublin
Dr. Julia C. Schneider, Department of Asian Studies, University College Cork