Shelly Rigger, whose research focuses on Taiwanese politics and Taiwan’s relationships with the United States and People’s Republic of China, will be the next speaker at the next Modern China Lecture set on Wednesday, Feb. 21.

Rigger’s talk will take place in-person beginning at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time at CSUSB’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences building, room SB-210, and on Zoom at https://csusb.zoom.us/j/388207496.

The program is free and open to the public. No advance registration is required.

Rigger is the Brown Professor of Asian Studies and vice president for Academic Affairs and dean of faculty at Davidson College in North Carolina, where she teaches courses on East Asian Politics, including domestic politics of East Asian countries and the international relations of the region. Her research and writing focuses on Taiwanese politics and on the relationships among the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan.

She is the author of two academic books on Taiwan’s domestic politics – “Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy” (Routledge 1999) and “From Opposition to Power: Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party” (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2001) – as well as two books for general readers – “Why Taiwan Matters: Small Island, Global Powerhouse” (2011) and “The Tiger Leading the Dragon: How Taiwan Propelled China’s Economic Rise” (2021).

In 2019-20, she was a Fulbright scholar at National Taiwan University in Taipei, studying the political and social views of Taiwanese youth. She was professor at two universities in the People’s Republic of China: Fudan University (2006) and Shanghai Jiaotong University (2013 and 2015), and a visiting researcher at National Chengchi University in Taiwan in 2005. Rigger is also a non-resident fellow of the China Policy Institute at Nottingham University and a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

The Modern China Lecture Series was initiated to promote awareness of important issues related to China for those on the CSUSB campus and in the community.

In the series of more than 100 lectures, workshops, film screenings and roundtable forums since January 2014, China scholars from UC San Diego, UC Riverside, the Claremont Colleges, UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, Columbia, Oxford and other institutions have visited the CSUSB campus to share their expertise and opinions.

Speakers in the series have included specialists in history, economics, political science, philosophy, finance, security studies, literature, anthropology and other fields. Recordings of past talks can be found at the CSUSB Modern China Lecture Series channel on YouTube.

Upcoming speakers in the series include:

The series cosponsors this year are the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Intellectual Life Fund. Series organizers are Jeremy Murray, professor of history, and Alexander Serrano, a UC Santa Barbara doctoral candidate.

For more information on the Modern China Lecture Series, contact Murray at jmurray@csusb.edu.