Summer Break for our Brown Bag Talks

The De:link//Re:link Brown Bag Talks concentrate on specific areas of research, both from guests and associated researchers, thus offering a platform for synergies under the umbrella of the project’s own research orientation. In general, each talk will consist of a short input of around 15 to 20 minutes, sometimes based on a text distributed prior to the meeting. The events are planned in a hybrid format.

Our series of Brown Bag Talks is taking a break over the summer, but will return in the autumn. Below is a taste of what’s coming up and what subjects we’ve already covered.

Upcoming talks

15 October 2026
Title tbc
Ibrahima Niang (University Cheikh Anta Diop)

12 Nov 2026
Neoliberal Multiculturalism and the Remaking of Minority Subjectivity:
Exploring the Lifeworlds of Salar Muslims in Qinghai, Northwest China
Man Tang (BGSMCS)
This research examines the remaking of multi-dimensional subjectivities among the Salar community – a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority in Qinghai – shaped by the intersection of transnational, national and local dynamics in the context of “neoliberal multiculturalism” signaled by the BRI. It seeks to complicate the existing scholarship on Muslims in China that tends to adopt a national analytical focus which over-politicizes or over-Islamizes the ethnocultural identity of minorities as being either Islam-reformist minded or as resisting/appropriating and internalizing the state influence. By exploring the Salar’s social, economic, moral and emotional lives in their hometown, this study shows how they draw on various discourses and value frameworks to negotiate self-identity and intersectional relations of hierarchies: global imaginary, state power, gender, religion, ethnicity, and social status. In doing so, they navigate their ethics of life and thereby sustain themselves and the Salar community.