2026 Conference Schedule (Shanghai)
AGPT 2026 to be held in Shanghai
Global Political Thought Conference - Shanghai 2026
Conference Programme
Day 1: June 16th Tuesday 14:00-19:00
Check-in at Jiaoshi Zhijia, hotel affiliated with the East China Normal University
Address: Hongmei South St. 5858, Minhang District, Shanghai, China 200241
17:30-19:30 Buffet dinner at the hotel
Day 2: June 17th Wednesday
9:00 – 9:20 Opening Ceremony
Humanities Building 5303
Chair: Li, Hongtu (Executive Director of the Centre for Global Intellectual History, East China Normal University; Professor of History, Fudan University)
Opening Remarks by Qu, Jun (Professor & Director of the History Department at the East China Normal University)
Conference Photograph
9:20 – 10:40 Panel 1 “Comparative Thought and the Global Turn”
Humanities 5303
15 minutes each, followed by 20 minutes of discussion
Chair: Xiao, Qi (East China Normal University)
Sakurai, Takamichi (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main & Keio University): “Comparative Political Thought and Linguistic Parochialism in Political Theory”
Tang, Xiaobing (East China Normal University): “Comparison and Uncritical Conceptual Appropriation (Bifu): Rethinking the Debate on Chinese and Western Cultures” (in Chinese, with on-screen translation)
Yuan, Shang (Fudan University): “Rethinking and Restructuring: Exploring Paths to Global Intellectual History”
Ashby, Thomas (University of Tokyo): “Bricolage, the History of Political Thought, and the Global Turn”
10:40-10:50 Tea Break
10:50 – 12:10 Panel 2: “Spaces of Social Thought: Sea and Land”
Humanities 5303
15 minutes each, followed by 20 minutes of discussion
Chair: Chang, Yi Ning (Harvard University)
Ryu, Aerim (Kyushu University): “Islands and Political Imagination in Meiji Japan: Between Gulliver’s Fictional Space and Crusoe’s Imperial Frontier”
Zhu, Ming (East China Normal University): “Travels, Encounters, and Fusions across Civilizations from an Indian-Ocean Perspective” （in Chinese, with on-screen translation）
Ruß, Daniela (Universität Leipzig): “Seeing like a Proletarian: Aleksandr Bogdanov’s Energetic World-Making”
Simonyan, Artur (Leibniz-Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung): “Post-Soviet Constitutionalism and Territorial Conflicts: A SWAIL Reassessment”
12:15 – 14:00 Lunch
Humanities 5301
14:00 – 15:20 Panel 3: “Ideas across Cultures and Contexts”
Humanities 5301
15 minutes each, followed by 20 minutes of discussion
Chair: Baycroft, Timothy (East China Normal University)
Bandeira, Egas Bender de Moniz (Tohoku University): “Leo Tolstoy as a Constitutional Theorist: Rereading his Letter to a Chinese Gentleman in a Global Context”
Ma, Hualing (East China Normal University): “The Debate between Isaiah Berlin and Leo Strauss in the Chinese Context” (in Chinese, with on-screen translation)
Chen, Zhenxin (East China Normal University & Freie Universität Berlin): “The Global Moments of New Liberalism: China’s ‘Third-Way’ in the Early 20th Century”
Abbasi, Salar (Universidade Católica Portuguesa): “Revisiting Hannah Arendt's Account of 'Banality of Evil' in the Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran”
15:20-15:50 Tea Break
15:50 – 17:10 Panel 4 “Synergies: Skepticism, democracy, positivism, Marxism”
Humanities 5301
15 minutes each, followed by 20 minutes of discussion
Chair: Zhao, Kuangyu (Duke Kunshan University)
Rathnam, Lincoln (Duke Kunshan University): “The Practice of Skepticism: Montaigne and Zhuangzi on Freedom, Coexistence, and the Limits of Government”
Duan, Demin (Peking University): “Tocqueville between West and East”
Fang, Jie (Fudan University): “The Divergence of Positivism: Disagreement on Human Nature in the Correspondence of Comte and Mill” (in Chinese, with on-screen translation)
Zhong, Xueping (Tufts University): “Beyond ‘National Allegory’: (Western) Marxism and Modern Chinese Literature”
17:30 Dinner at Jiaoshi Zhiia
Day 3: June 18th Thursday
8:45-10:05 Panel 5 “Thought Experiments across Cultures and Conditions”
Humanities 5303
15 minutes each, followed by 20 minutes of discussion
Chair: Anna Irene Baka (Univerzita Karlova)
Rathnam, Lindsay (Duke Kunshan University): “Herodotus as the First Comparative Theorist”
Yin, Shoufu (University of British Columbia): “Democraticization through Wang Zhiwang Moments”
Matsudaira, Naruhito (Tokujin) (Kanagawa University): “Asian Constitutionalisms in International Contexts: Hsü Dau-lin, Higuchi Yoichi, Shimazono Susumu, Asakawa Kan'ichi”
Chang, Yi Ning (Harvard University): “From Social Theory to Democratic Thought: Conflict and Consensus in Lee Kuan Yew's Early Political Thought, 1959-1963”
10:05-10:20 Tea Break
10:20 – 11:20 Panel 6: “Speech and/as Act”
Humanities 5303
15 minutes each, followed by 20 minutes of discussion
Chair: Tian, Run (East China Normal University)
Holman, Christopher (Nanyang Technological University): “Utopia between Politics and Ethics: Levinas, Liberalism, and the State”
Baka, Anna Irene (Univerzita Karlova): “Constitutional Authenticity as Temporal and Narrative Intersubjectivity”
Jeong, Jihyun (Duke Kunshan University): “What Does Provocative Resistance Communicate?”
11:20 – 11:40 Closing Ceremony
Chair: Li, Hansong (American University; Harvard University; East China Normal University)
Closing panel: Tong, Shijun (New York University, Shanghai) & Gao, Quanxi (Shanghai Jiaotong University)
12:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 16:00 Optional Visit: East China Normal University Archive Centre (Special Collection in Socialist History)
For those interested in visiting the archive centre, please gather at the Humanities Building 5303 promptly at 14:00
Day 4: June 19th Friday Departure