Rate My Professor Yongming Zhou

Zhou Yongming is a distinguished Chair Professor in Historical and Cultural Anthropology and serves as Vice President (Academic) at Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University (BNBU), within the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences. He completed his studies at Nanjing University from 1980 to 1987, where he briefly taught in the Chinese Department, before pursuing a PhD in cultural anthropology at Duke University, which he received in 1997. His academic career began at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999 as an assistant professor in anthropology, where he earned tenure in 2005 and was promoted to full professor in 2010 after over two decades of service. From 2001 to 2002, he held a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. Prior to joining BNBU, Zhou was a Chair Professor at Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), directing the Center for Social Sciences and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences, and serving as Executive Director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. Additionally, he has been appointed “Qiushi” Chair Professor at Zhejiang University and distinguished professor at Sun Yat-sen University and Chongqing University.

Professor Zhou's research specializes in historical and cultural anthropology, with pioneering work in "Roadology," exploring the history, environmental impacts, and socio-cultural dimensions of roads, particularly transnational projects on the Tibetan Plateau's periphery and in the Great Mekong Subregion. He has also investigated the historicizing of online politics from telegraphy to the internet in China. Key publications include his authored books: Anti-Drug Crusades in Twentieth-Century China: Nationalism, History, and State-Building (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) and Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China (Stanford University Press, 2006). He edited “Roadology”: Roads, Space, Culture and Chinese Anthropology and is editor-in-chief of Heritage Studies. His accolades encompass a Mellon Fellowship at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge, visiting fellow at the East Asian Institute (1999) and senior fellow at the Asia Institute (2008) at the National University of Singapore, and presidency of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs in 2012. Currently, as Executive Director of BNBU's Institute for Advanced Study, he advances interdisciplinary initiatives, including the integration of AI with liberal arts education and research.