Chinese Television and English-Speaking Audiences: part 2, Stirling edition
On 5-6 Feb 2026 we held the second of two British Academy-funded workshops at Stirling University as part of the Chinese Television and English-Speaking Audiences project following a successful first meeting in Chengdu, China, in July 2025.
The outcome of these workshops will be a pair of special sections in the journal Participations, due for publication in mid and late 2027.
At the Chengdu workshop, we heard from half of the participants who presented work in progress, with the selection made based on research specialisms of the host department. At Stirling, we heard from the balance of contributors, whose work focused more on aspects of gender and sexuality. As in Chengdu, these presentations were open to other interested local scholars, who also contributed to the discussions following each piece. Unlike in Chengdu, we ran a fully hybrid event so that contributors with work commitments that kept them from travelling to Scotland could participate in the discussions.
The additional element at this second workshop was two half-day closed sessions bracketing the public presentations, in which each draft article was discussed amongst participating contributors only. We asked for partial drafts (of at least 3,000 words) for each article ahead of the February workshop, and these were circulated to the rest of the group of authors. Some offered full (or over-long) articles, while others offered more provisional sketches. Two individuals were assigned as a primary readers for each piece, and their feedback framed the discussion. However, as the whole group had access to the files, and the discussion was prefaced by a short reminder from the author of the context for their contribution (or indeed, a full presentation earlier that day), we ended up having good discussions with the entire group about each piece. This allowed for a collaborative and supportive overview of what worked, what didn’t, how to more fully fit the project theme, suggestions for further reading or development, and so forth.
While this may seem like an elaborate and drawn-out way to produce some outputs, our aim is that this process will have a range of benefits. Thanks to the British Academy funding, we were able to support scholars from three continents – most of whom are junior or contingent faculty – to travel in person and network with fellow contributors and members of the academic communities of the host institutions. Beyond a CV-building opportunity, which has its own benefit, the informality of conversations around formal events allow for connections that cannot be anticipated, and can often lead to new collaborations.
More immediately, and more applicable to the journal articles themselves, is the way that presenting work in progress, writing an article draft, and getting supportive and forthright feedback can only strengthen the outputs ahead of the more usual editorial feedback on full articles. A typical way to publish an article is to produce a draft, submit it for consideration, take anonymous reviews into account when redrafting, and then seeing the work published. The structure we are using in the project allows for more half-formed ideas to be shaped through conversation. Authors (myself included) used the discussion to ask follow-up questions, to check cultural assumptions, and get clarification on what direction in the writing might make for a stronger argument. We could brainstorm potential case studies, come to a collective agreement on points of ethics around data collection, and get external validation on approaches taken. Writing can be a lonely process, and this structure aims to provide both a series of scaffolding deadlines to meet the schedule agreed with the journal, and peer support in the writing process.
With final drafts due this summer, we look forward to the next steps!