UCL & ChinaUCL & China

Useful contacts

UCLGower StreetLondonWC1E 6BTUKT +44 (0)20 7679 3000F +44 (0)20 7679 3001W www.ucl.ac.uk

Pro-Provost for ChinaProfessor David NorseE d.norse@ucl.ac.ukT +44 (0)20 7679 4543F +44 (0)20 7679 5587

UCL China OfficeXuezhu Long (Geography 1998)E ucl@china.com

Prospective undergraduate andgraduate studentsAdmissions & General EnquiriesT +44 (0)20 7679 3000F +44 (0)20 7679 3001W www.ucl.ac.uk/prospective-students

Other graduate-study enquiriesGraduate SchoolT +44 (0)20 7679 7840F +44 (0)20 7679 7043E gradschool@ucl.ac.uk

Former UCL studentsAlumni RelationsT +44 (0)20 7679 7677F +44 (0)20 7209 0117E alumni@ucl.ac.uk

Potential supportersFundraisingT +44 (0)20 7679 7670F +44 (0)20 7209 0117E fundraising@ucl.ac.uk

MediaMedia RelationsT +44 (0)20 7679 1621F +44 (0)20 7916 8526E media@ucl.ac.uk

UCL is London’s research and teachingpowerhouse. It addresses the world’sproblems through the application of itsexpertise, spanning the sciences, arts,humanities, social sciences andbiomedicine. The university derives greatstrength from its global perspective: fromcollaborations with academic centres ofexcellence around the globe; the manyinternational staff and students who studyat UCL; the reserves of knowledge andlearning drawn from around the world.

UCL, and indeed the entire western world,owes a significant debt to China. Over 500years before the West, China wasdeveloping science and technology in anumber of fields, including the productionof cast iron, the creation of fine porcelainand silk, the development of the magneticcompass and astro-navigation. Today, ourlinks with China are thriving, and studentsfrom China make up the largest nationalgroup among our lively internationalstudent population.

I was pleased to visit China in 2003, tolaunch a joint venture between PekingUniversity and UCL, the new InternationalCentre for Chinese Heritage &Archaeology, which will have offices andactivities in both institutions. As the firstsuch venture between the UK and China,the centre is the latest development in along and fruitful relationship betweenUCL and Chinese universities.

UCL collaborates with China in a numberof research initiatives, including theInstitute of Child Health’s long-runningresearch programme with ZheijiangUniversity; a joint teaching programmebetween UCL’s Faculty of Engineering andthe Dalian University of Technology; anagricultural pollution programme runbetween China Agricultural University andthe Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is apriority for me to strengthen theserelationships and build new ones for thebenefit of both UCL and China.

Professor Malcolm Grant President and Provost of UCL

UCL at a glance

19,000 students –a third of themgraduate students– from more than140 countries

More than 700students from P R China, whosepreferred subjectsare Engineering,Mathematical &Physical Sciences,Architecture andLaws

9,000 staff,including morethan 4,000academic andresearch staff

19 Nobel Prize-winning staffand formerstudents

70 academicdepartments, fromArchaeology toBiochemistry, andFine Art to Physics& Astronomy

Hundreds ofcollaborativeresearch andteaching partners

Ten museums andcollections

Annual turnover ofmore than £450million

Essential inform a t i o n

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UCL is London’s first and largest multifaculty university and was thethird to be established in England after Oxford and Cambridge.Founded in 1826, UCL challenged the social exclusivity, religiousrestrictions and academic constraints of Oxbridge, becoming the firstuniversity to admit students of any race, class or religion, and thefirst to welcome women on equal terms with men. Thiscommitment to inclusivity continues today as UCL activelyencourages under-represented groups to take up study and work atthe university.

UCL’s radical approach did much more than widen access to highereducation: it introduced academic disciplines required by theemerging industrial and commercial society. For instance, it becamethe first English university to offer the systematic teaching of law,architecture and medicine, subjects in which it still excels today.

Its academics helped to shape the modern world. Among theirbreakthroughs were the identification of hormones and vitamins, thediscovery of the inert gases, including neon, and the invention of thethermionic valve, which made radio and modern electronics possible.

The university was global in perspective even then. Students fromoutside the UK were there from the start, and in 1837, UCLappointed the UK’s first Professor of Chinese. Today, students andacademics are able to use Chinese text characters in their managedcomputer service, an aid to teaching, research and interaction withstudents and researchers in P R China.

The university’s breadth of excellence fosters the creation of teamsof specialists dedicated to finding practical solutions to today’s andtomorrow’s problems. Challenging the boundaries of knowledge,creative individual researchers from diverse disciplines bring togethertheir expertise to solve difficult problems.

The globalisation of environmental, economic, social and policyissues has been matched by UCL’s multidisciplinary, problem-solvingstrategy. Collaboration with networks of individuals and groupsa round the world is a natural extension of its interd i s c i p l i n a ry appro a c h .

Together, the university and its partners are enhancing theintellectual, cultural, social and technological wellbeing of peoplethroughout the world.

London’s first university

UCL has a Pro-Provost for China?Professor David Norse, Pro-Provost for China, has developed UCL’sstrategy for expanding academic and research links with China. Headvises the President and Provost of UCL on major trends in China’shigher education. He says: “Since the opening up of the Chineseeconomy in 1978, China’s higher education and science andtechnology capacity has blossomed, and UCL’s China strategy is toestablish strong links with China’s top universities and forgepartnerships between our leading research centres and similarcentres of excellence in China.” Professor Norse visits Chinaregularly in connection with his positions as honorary professor ofthe Chinese Academy of Sciences and member of the China Council for International Co-operation on Environment &Development. He is the main contact point for visiting Chineseacademics and researchers.

U C L has long-standing re s e a rch links with archaeology in China?Professor Xia Nai, Director of Beijing’s Institute of Archaeology,studied for his PhD at UCL in the 1930s. A number of archaeologicalresearch projects have continued to link UCL and China since then.This research relationship has recently been cemented with theestablishment of the joint Peking University and UCL InternationalCentre for Chinese Heritage & Archaeology, with offices andactivities in both London and Beijing.

UCL collaborates with China to study climate change?UCL’s Environmental Change Research Centre (ECRC) and theDepartment of Geography at China’s Lanzhou University runlongstanding joint research projects. Dr Jonathan Holmes (ECRC),

who has conducted research and taught at Lanzhou University, said:“Lanzhou has a long history of research into environmental change,especially the examination of lake sediments, and UCL is very strongin that area.” Other climate change collaborations are run by UCL’sProfessor Peter Sammonds, who worked with the Chinese Academyof Sciences on the influence of climate change on ice sheet dynamics,glacier melt and its implications for sea level rise, and Professor DavidNorse, who collaborated with the academy to conduct research intothe reduction of greenhouse emissions from Chinese crop production.

UCL provides scholarships for Chinese students?Students from China are eligible for UCL Undergraduate OpenScholarships, UCL Faculty Scholarships and UCL PathfinderScholarships, with a value of £3,000–£5,000. Graduate scholarshipsfor students from China include those sponsored by UCL alumni Mr Winston Chu (Laws 1960) and Mr Simon Li (Laws 1950).

UCL works for the conservation of Chinese wildlife?Academics from UCL’s Department of Economics have researchedoptions for the conservation of the giant panda in Sichuan province.Professor Tim Swanson and Dr Andreas Kontoleon have looked atways of keeping the panda’s natural habitat available, rather thanconserving the species in pens or cages. Their research showed thateco-tourists and other foreign travellers were happy to pay asurcharge to provide a suitable habitat for the pandas and to aid theoverall conservation of China’s natural habitat and wildlife.

UCL academics have supported policy formation in China’sState Council?Over the last decade, UCL academics have contributed to policy inseveral fields. In UCL’s Department of Economics, Professor JeremyWarford has advised on the use of pollution taxes and other economic instruments, while Professor Tim Swanson has helpedformulate eco-tourism and water pricing policies and Professor DavidNorse has advised on agricultural sustainability and control ofagricultural pollution.

UCL has a thriving student Chinese Society?Established under the recognition of UCL’s student union, the ChineseSociety is one of UCL’s largest international societies. The society runsa series of annual events, and aims to promote Chinese cultureamong the UCL community, welcoming all undergraduate andpostgraduate students from any ethnic background at UCL – including,of course, the 713 Chinese nationals currently enrolled on degreecourses at UCL. Alumni of UCL who are now in China can keep intouch with the university through the UCL Alumni Contact in China,Xuezhu Long (Geography 1998), who runs the UCL China Office, orthrough K K Chu (Laws 1960), who is President of the UCL AlumniHong Kong Club.

UCL is assessing the health needs of China’s migrant population?There are 120 million internal migrants in China, and the number isrising. City governments have been urged to identify the health, socialand educational needs of migrant populations in order to amelioratetheir poor living and working situations. UCL’s Centre for InternationalChild Health is working with Zhejiang University’s Department ofSocial Medicine to determine the health needs of migrant workers andtheir children in Zhejiang Province, and to compare these with settledurban and rural dwellers. They are collecting data on health status,including reproductive health and mental wellbeing, as well as bloodtests for HIV and hepatitis, and migrant workers’ access to healthcareand working conditions.

Did you know that . . .

Cover: Wooden statue from the Ming dynastyOpposite:1. Giant panda in Sichuan 2. Chinese New Year lion dance at UCL3. Soil erosion control on the Loess Plateau 4. Sampling lake sediments for detecting environmental change

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