The China COVID Project: Document History. Advance Analysis. Foster Collaboration

For non-Columbia affiliates, registration is required to access the Morningside campus. After registering you will receive an email with a QR code that must be presented along with a government-issued ID (your name must match exactly the name registered for the event) at either the 116th Street & Broadway or 116th Street & Amsterdam gates for entry. Please register using a unique email address (one email address per registrant) by 4:00 pm on Feb. 4 for campus access.

Names will be submitted for QR codes 1-2 days prior to the event. Registrants will receive an email from CU Guest Access with the QR code before or on the day of the event. NOTE: You cannot access campus using the QR code from Eventbrite.

Speakers: 

Qin Gao, Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice; Acting Director of the Asian American Initiative; Associate Dean for Doctoral Education; Director of China Center for Social Policy, Columbia School of Social Work

Stacie Tao, Postdoctoral Scholar, the University of Chicago

April Goh, Fellow, China Center for Social Policy, Columbia School of Social Work

Qin Gao and her research team present insights from the China COVID Project’s review of interdisciplinary scholarship on pandemic governance in China. Framing legitimacy as a multiscalar process that is structural, institutional, and emotional, their talk synthesizes findings from nine journal special issues and three major books. It examines how state power, social infrastructure, and civic narratives responded under crisis, drawing on methods ranging from ethnography and content analysis to survey research and narrative studies.

This event is part of the 2025-2026 lecture series “COVID-19 Governance and Impacts: China from Comparative Perspectives.” The series will be part of the China COVID Project, a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research initiative funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. It aims to spotlight new empirical and theoretical research that interrogates China’s post-COVID standing through social, economic, political, and gender-based lenses. It features scholars working on governance, public health, digital statecraft, labor, gender, and civil society responses in China and Asia. The series will foster public dialogue and contribute to documentation and analysis of the pandemic’s legacy.

This event is hosted by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and cosponsored by the Columbia China Center for Social Policy.

Registration:

• To attend this event in-person, please register HERE.
• To attend this event online, please register HERE.