Director, China Media Centre
Email: cmc@wmin.ac.uk

Biography

Professor de Burgh argues that the study of the media – its political economy, cultural influences and sociology – is a valuable tool for the understanding of any given society, particularly China, where the media have very particular characteristics. With his colleague Professor Colin Sparks, he is one of a small number of academics who have pioneered the study of the Chinese media outside China, lead by the example of Professor Lee Chinchuan, until recently of Minnesota. By now, it is fair to say that the subject has taken off, particularly in the UK, USA, Germany and Italy.

de Burgh started by attempting to understand the roles of journalists, particularly investigative journalists, in China. Recently he has been engaged in the initiation and management of the China Media Centre, which undertakes both academic research and cooperative projects with Chinese media organizations such as the State Council Information Office, Hunan Broadcasting and Shanghai Media Group.

In 2007 de Burgh spent 3 months as Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University (‘China’s Cambridge’), under the Chinese Ministry of Education’s programme for bringing ‘key knowledge and talents’ to China. He took a party of media students to Tibet, visited nature reserves and explored Chinese Turkestan.

The CMC has also involved itself in increasing knowledge about China in the UK, notably being responsible for the content of seminars on the significance of China’s rise in the Carlton Club (2005) and 11 Downing Street (2005-6). de Burgh also directed a series of 5 conferences –The China Impact: The Westminster Hearings on China’s Economic Development and the UK – in Parliament (2007). The conferences will form the basis for part of a book with a much wider theme. This will move beyond the economic changes that are stupefying the world to its softpower initiatives, mass emigration, educational propulsion and public diplomacy; it will discuss the potential impact of China’s culture upon the rest of the world and the ways in which that world may adapt to the arrival of a phenomenon with 5 times the population of the USA and with an intensely felt and powerfully projected culture, very different from the Anglophone.

de Burgh’s own scholarly interests have developed to encompass wider issues, not surprisingly since he originally studied history and lectured at Edinburgh University in Chinese history soon after graduating.

In 2004 Hugo de Burgh and friends Roger Williams (hepatology), Kieran O’Hara (artificial intelligence) and Jeremy Black (history) founded AGORA, the forum for culture and education as a discussion group for academics. It is now an established think tank, its full-time Director working from an office in Sloane Street and with leading academics and HE managers on its Board. It held a re-launch at the Royal Society in 2007 to mark the publication of  Can the Prizes still Glitter? The future of British universities in a changing world, for which he co-edited contributors including Bill Rammell, Chris Patten, Alison Wolf, Boris Johnson, Frank Furedi and Harry Kroto.

Selected Publications

(2010 in hand) China’s Environment and China’s Media*

(2010 in press) [ed] 应对西方媒体:新闻发言人及新闻官国际工作Western Correspondents in China: system and policy Beijing: Tsinghua University Press

(2008) [ed] Investigative Journalism* [2nd Edition] London: Routledge

Now the core book on IJ in the UK, with 10 interpretative chapters and 12 chapters on the practise. The first edition has been translated, inter alia, into Spanish, Portugese, Farsi and Russian and a Chinese edition is underway.

(2007) The China Impact : China’s Rise and the future of the UK London: McKinsey & Co

Report of the Westminster Hearings on China’s Impact, held in Parliament March-July 2007

(2007）[co-editor, with Fazackerley, Anna and Black, Jeremy] Can the Prizes still Glitter? The future of British universities in a changing world UBP [contributors include Bill Rammell, Chris Patten, Alison Wolf, Boris Johnson, Frank Furedi, Harry Kroto] Milton Keynes: UBPISBN-10 0-9554642-0-X

(2006) China: Friend or Foe? Cambridge: Icon ISBN (hardback)10 1-84046-733-9 (paperback) -13 97-1840467-33-8

(2005) [ed] China and Britain: the Potential Impact of China’s Development London: Smith Institute ISBN1902488938

(2005) Making Journalists: Diverse Models, Global Issues* London: Routledge ISBN (hardback) 0-415-31502-6 (paperback) 0-415-31501-8.

The internationalization of journalism, including Latin America, the Arab World, Africa, Continental Europe, India and the USA

(2003) The Chinese Journalist: Mediating information in the world’s most populous country London: Routledge ISBN 0-415-30573-X