Hugo de Burgh
Director, China
Media Centre
Biography
Professor de Burgh argues that the
study of the media – its political economy, cultural influences and
sociology – is a valuable tool for the understanding of any given
society, particularly China, where the media have very particular
characteristics. With his colleague Professor Colin Sparks, he is
one of a small number of academics who have pioneered the study of
the Chinese media outside China, lead by the example of Professor
Lee Chinchuan, until recently of Minnesota. By now, it is fair to
say that the subject has taken off, particularly in the UK, USA,
Germany and Italy.
de Burgh started by attempting to
understand the roles of journalists, particularly investigative
journalists, in China. Recently he has been engaged in the
initiation and management of the China Media Centre, which
undertakes both academic research and cooperative projects with
Chinese media organizations such as the State Council Information
Office, Hunan Broadcasting and Shanghai Media Group.
In 2007 de Burgh spent 3 months
as Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University (‘China’s Cambridge’),
under the Chinese Ministry of Education’s programme for bringing
‘key knowledge and talents’ to China. He took a party of media
students to Tibet, visited nature reserves and explored Chinese
Turkestan.
The CMC has also involved itself in
increasing knowledge about China in the UK, notably being
responsible for the content of seminars on the significance of
China’s rise in the Carlton Club (2005) and 11 Downing Street
(2005-6). de Burgh also directed a series of 5 conferences –The
China Impact: The Westminster Hearings on China’s Economic
Development and the UK – in Parliament (2007). The conferences
will form the basis for part of a book with a much wider theme.
This will move beyond the economic changes that are stupefying the
world to its softpower initiatives, mass emigration, educational
propulsion and public diplomacy; it will discuss the potential
impact of China’s culture upon the rest of the world and the ways
in which that world may adapt to the arrival of a phenomenon with 5
times the population of the USA and with an intensely felt and
powerfully projected culture, very different from the
Anglophone.
de Burgh’s own scholarly interests
have developed to encompass wider issues, not surprisingly since he
originally studied history and lectured at Edinburgh University in
Chinese history soon after graduating.
In 2004 Hugo de Burgh and friends
Roger Williams (hepatology), Kieran O’Hara (artificial
intelligence) and Jeremy Black (history) founded AGORA, the
forum for culture and education as a discussion group for
academics. It is now an established think tank, its full-time
Director working from an office in Sloane Street and with leading
academics and HE managers on its Board. It held a re-launch at the
Royal Society in 2007 to mark the publication of Can the
Prizes still Glitter? The future of British universities in a
changing world, for which he co-edited contributors including
Bill Rammell, Chris Patten, Alison Wolf, Boris Johnson, Frank
Furedi and Harry Kroto.
Selected
Publications
(2010 in hand) China’s Environment
and China’s Media*
(2010 in press) [ed]
应对西方媒体:新闻发言人及新闻官国际工作Western Correspondents in China: system and
policy Beijing: Tsinghua University Press
(2008) [ed] Investigative
Journalism* [2nd Edition] London: Routledge
Now the core book on IJ in the UK,
with 10 interpretative chapters and 12 chapters on the practise.
The first edition has been translated, inter alia, into Spanish,
Portugese, Farsi and Russian and a Chinese edition is
underway.
(2007) The China Impact : China’s
Rise and the future of the UK London: McKinsey & Co
Report of the Westminster Hearings
on China’s Impact, held in Parliament March-July 2007
(2007）[co-editor, with Fazackerley,
Anna and Black, Jeremy] Can the Prizes still Glitter? The
future of British universities in a changing world UBP
[contributors include Bill Rammell, Chris Patten, Alison Wolf,
Boris Johnson, Frank Furedi, Harry Kroto] Milton Keynes: UBPISBN-10
0-9554642-0-X
(2006) China: Friend or Foe?
Cambridge: Icon ISBN (hardback)10 1-84046-733-9 (paperback) -13
97-1840467-33-8
(2005) [ed] China and Britain: the
Potential Impact of China’s Development London: Smith
Institute ISBN1902488938
(2005) Making Journalists: Diverse
Models, Global Issues* London: Routledge ISBN (hardback)
0-415-31502-6 (paperback) 0-415-31501-8.
The internationalization of
journalism, including Latin America, the Arab World, Africa,
Continental Europe, India and the USA
(2003) The Chinese Journalist:
Mediating information in the world’s most populous country
London: Routledge ISBN 0-415-30573-X
Contact details:
Hugo de Burgh
Email: mailto:cmc-office@westminster.ac.uk