The week before Christmas, a small delegation from the CMTC went to Nanjing, China, to attend the formal launch of the Centre for the Study of Excavated Manuscripts. The new centre at Nanjing University is directed by Dirk Meyer, Professor of Chinese Philosophy at The Queen’s College and director of CMTC Oxford. The innovative Oxford Centre takes a global approach to pre-modern texts and the manuscript forms in which they are preserved, and this partnership will enable a strong presence for CMTC and its work in Asia. Together, the centres will develop inter- and cross-disciplinary research on early text cultures across the world to foster the pollination of knowledge across the study of literate societies.

CMTC is already in collaboration with the Centre for the Study and Protection of Excavated Manuscripts at Tsinghua University, Beijing through a six-year research partnership, and the three centres will coordinate international conferences and workshops on different aspects of textual cultures and their role in human communication and knowledge.

The new centre will also serve as the Asian distribution centre for the CMTC journal, Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC). CMTC is also launching a new book series, Text Cultures, which will publish Chinese translations of seminal books on manuscript and text cultures that would otherwise not be accessible in China. Authors already lined up include Professor Hindy Najman, Oriel and Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture in Oxford, and Professor Gregory Nagy, Professor of Classics at Harvard. The series, for which Dirk Meyer will serve as Senior Editor, will be distributed via the new centre at Nanjing University, and will be published by the prestigious Chinese press, Fenghuang Publishing.

https://www.ames.ox.ac.uk/article/centre-manuscript-and-text-cultures-establishes-new-partnership-china