1: It’s my first time to know something about the zine. Zines are normally self-published, rejecting mainstream capitalist publishing culture. There are no rules for making a zine; It’s just a creative pursuit. It’s simple and informal. You can use cutting , pasting, repurposing images from mainstream culture. You can choose to do it by yourself or do it with friends. It can be handmade include hand-drawing, writing, indecipherable text and etc. Zines imagines the world would be anti-capitalist, autonomous, collective, creative and so on. It’s a prefigurative worldmaking. We did some cases study through the lecture. I look forward to making my own zine by myself or with my friends in future.
2: 2024年11月8日 Optimizing the Personal Income Tax with Age as a Tag Insight from Golden Age
Dr. Xiaoliang Yang
Dr. Yang thought the current income tax system is not mature enough because it lacks the compensation mechanisms for disadvantage workers. He suggested that policy maker should consider introducing labor opportunity tags (e.g., age) into tax design. The golden age of Chinese is from 30~40 years old. Some countries ( Sweden 、Singapore and the US) already tried it before. They halved the payroll tax rate for young workers or set higher tax exemption for elder workers. Dr. Yang believed that the corporate decision-making can help to explore profound impact of age-dependent taxes on the labor market.
3: 2024年12月11日 Dogme Unplugged Teaching Madness
Scott Thornbury
Dogme movement is from film making industry, aims to back the nature of film. Doctor Thornbury adapted it into English teaching. There are three basic principles to follow, teaching conversation driven, materials light and focus on emergent language. I have been an English teacher for more than ten years. I really enjoyed this topic. Applying Dogme to English classroom means let the students learn English by communicating, not to learn English to communicate. Being a teacher shouldn’t rely on the technology, but to focus on the students. Draw the materials from the students’ conversation to teach, help them to share but not correct them. Try to bring joy back to the classroom. It’s a wonderful lecture.
4: 2024年12月21日 Group Decision-Making, Externalities and Efficiency
Professor Shravan Luckraz
Economics is associated with our daily lives. Professor Shravan gave us a lecture about using economic models to make a group decision. Group decision making is very complicated. We need to consider the highest surplus. Professor gave us some examples to understand deeper about social surplus. In our daily lives, sometimes we won’t choose the most sufficient option because of our selfishness. Alternatives to taxes and subsides to correct inefficiencies. We also can use bargaining and negotiations to help for efficiency. It’s my first time learn to use economics to solve the problem of decision making. It’s very useful and practical.
5: 2025年1月15日 ECON Research Seminar: The resilience of group cohesion to economic inequality
Dr. Tom Lane
This seminar talks about the relationship between group cohesion and economic inequality. Dr. Tom Lane conducted this research through different games with other university. Group cohesion is very important for economic efficiency. Dr. Tom’s team found out that stronger group cohesion is associated with more efficient interactions. Pay inequality within groups hasn’t hindered the formation of group cohesion as they expected. Moreover, cohesion is significantly strengthened by inequality between groups. These results affirmed that interpersonal relationships contributed the huge resilience to economic disparities, undermining a potential pathway through which inequality could harm efficiency. This research is very meaningful. I just concerned that the result wasn’t convincing enough since they conducted the research by some games instead of actual situation.
6：2025年3 月2日 From Policy to Power: How Educating Girls Transforming Africa’s Future
Roshni Mooneeram
Dr. Roshni worked in UNNC before, then she joined African Union , EU institutes and etc. She is from Mauritius, and did a lot of good work in Africa. She helped the women entrepreneur to gain the leadership skill for their career. She found out a lot of women in Africa didn’t go to work even with high education. She helped the girls to get education opportunities at school. She mentioned that the girl who finished the secondary school earn double than the one who didn’t. During the Covid Pandemic, most girls of Africa were forced to leave school, some of them need to help the family, some of them were forced to get married or raped. I feel sorry for some girls of Africa, and I am happy Dr.Roshni and other people are doing something to make the world different and better.
7：2025年3 月2日 FHSS Public Lecture: From China to the Indian Ocean: Zheng He and the Curious Case of the Dodo
Roshni Mooneeram
This lecture is about the special bird Dodo and Z heng He’s story. It’s embarrassing that I know little about Dodo and Zheng He before the lecture. Dodo was extincted because it couldn’t fly. Dodo lost the ability of flying because of harmless environment, they didn’t have any prey in Mauritius. I stared to revalue the challenges and difficulties in our lives. Zheng He was a wonderful navigator, he fleet reached Southeast Asia, India,the Arabian Peninsula, and the East African coast. He even bought a giraffe as a gift to the emperor. I brought my son and student to the lecture, my student Emily even asked one question after the lecture.
8：2025年3 月5日 FHSS IC Public Lecture: The Art of Media War: Media Strategies in the Digital Age
Professor Ivy gave us a talk about the art of media war. There are different definitions for the media war. Today’s talk is mainly on the competition between different media outlets. She conducted her research based on Chinese famous military book ‘The Art of War’which written by Sun Tzu Wu. The paper was broken into five parts: the way, heaven, earth, general and the law. The research cases are from three countries which included China, Australia and Japan. She already interviewed some media journals and senior managers from Australia Medias. She is planning to visit in Japan in May for her research. This research is still ongoing.
