AGPT Conference 2026 — Shanghai

Day 1: Tuesday, June 16

Jiaoshi Zhijia, ECNU hotel, Minhang District

1. 14:00–19:00

   Check-in

2. 17:30–19:30

   Buffet dinner at the hotel

Day 2: Wednesday, June 17

Humanities Building, East China Normal University

1. 9:00–9:20

   Opening ceremony

   Humanities 5303

   Chair: Li Hongtu (Executive Director, Centre for Global Intellectual History, East China Normal University; Professor of History, Fudan University)

   Opening remarks by Qu Jun (Professor and Director of the History Department, East China Normal University), followed by the conference photograph.

2. 9:20–10:40

   Panel 1: Comparative Thought and the Global Turn

   Humanities 5303

   • Takamichi Sakurai (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and Keio University), “Comparative Political Thought and Linguistic Parochialism in Political Theory”
   • Tang Xiaobing (East China Normal University), “Comparison and Uncritical Conceptual Appropriation (Bifu): Rethinking the Debate on Chinese and Western Cultures” (in Chinese, with on-screen translation)
   • Yuan Shang (Fudan University), “Rethinking and Restructuring: Exploring Paths to Global Intellectual History”
   • Thomas Ashby (University of Tokyo), “Bricolage, the History of Political Thought, and the Global Turn”

   Chair: Xiao Qi (East China Normal University)

3. 10:40–10:50

   Tea break

4. 10:50–12:10

   Panel 2: Spaces of Social Thought: Sea and Land

   Humanities 5303

   • Aerim Ryu (Kyushu University), “Islands and Political Imagination in Meiji Japan: Between Gulliver’s Fictional Space and Crusoe’s Imperial Frontier”
   • Zhu Ming (East China Normal University), “Travels, Encounters, and Fusions across Civilizations from an Indian-Ocean Perspective” (in Chinese, with on-screen translation)
   • Daniela Ruß (Universität Leipzig), “Seeing like a Proletarian: Aleksandr Bogdanov’s Energetic World-Making”
   • Artur Simonyan (Leibniz-Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung), “Post-Soviet Constitutionalism and Territorial Conflicts: A SWAIL Reassessment”

   Chair: Yi Ning Chang (Harvard University)

5. 12:15–14:00

   Lunch, Humanities 5301

6. 14:00–15:20

   Panel 3: Ideas across Cultures and Contexts

   Humanities 5301

   • Egas Bender de Moniz Bandeira (Tohoku University), “Leo Tolstoy as a Constitutional Theorist: Rereading his Letter to a Chinese Gentleman in a Global Context”
   • Ma Hualing (East China Normal University), “The Debate between Isaiah Berlin and Leo Strauss in the Chinese Context” (in Chinese, with on-screen translation)
   • Chen Zhenxin (East China Normal University and Freie Universität Berlin), “The Global Moments of New Liberalism: China’s ‘Third Way’ in the Early 20th Century”
   • Salar Abbasi (Universidade Católica Portuguesa), “Revisiting Hannah Arendt’s Account of ‘Banality of Evil’ in the Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran”

   Chair: Timothy Baycroft (East China Normal University)

7. 15:20–15:50

   Tea break

8. 15:50–17:10

   Panel 4: Synergies: Skepticism, Democracy, Positivism, Marxism

   Humanities 5301

   • Lincoln Rathnam (Duke Kunshan University), “The Practice of Skepticism: Montaigne and Zhuangzi on Freedom, Coexistence, and the Limits of Government”
   • Duan Demin (Peking University), “Tocqueville between West and East”
   • Fang Jie (Fudan University), “The Divergence of Positivism: Disagreement on Human Nature in the Correspondence of Comte and Mill” (in Chinese, with on-screen translation)
   • Xueping Zhong (Tufts University), “Beyond ‘National Allegory’: (Western) Marxism and Modern Chinese Literature”

   Chair: Kuangyu Zhao (Duke Kunshan University)

9. 17:30

   Dinner at Jiaoshi Zhijia

Day 3: Thursday, June 18

Humanities Building, East China Normal University

1. 8:45–10:05

   Panel 5: Thought Experiments across Cultures and Conditions

   Humanities 5303

   • Lindsay Rathnam (Duke Kunshan University), “Herodotus as the First Comparative Theorist”
   • Shoufu Yin (University of British Columbia), “Democraticization through Wang Zhiwang Moments”
   • Naruhito (Tokujin) Matsudaira (Kanagawa University), “Asian Constitutionalisms in International Contexts: Hsü Dau-lin, Higuchi Yoichi, Shimazono Susumu, Asakawa Kan’ichi”
   • Yi Ning Chang (Harvard University), “From Social Theory to Democratic Thought: Conflict and Consensus in Lee Kuan Yew’s Early Political Thought, 1959–1963”

   Chair: Anna Irene Baka (Univerzita Karlova)

2. 10:05–10:20

   Tea break

3. 10:20–11:20

   Panel 6: Speech and/as Act

   Humanities 5303

   • Christopher Holman (Nanyang Technological University), “Utopia between Politics and Ethics: Levinas, Liberalism, and the State”
   • Anna Irene Baka (Univerzita Karlova), “Constitutional Authenticity as Temporal and Narrative Intersubjectivity”
   • Jihyun Jeong (Duke Kunshan University), “What Does Provocative Resistance Communicate?”

   Chair: Tian Run (East China Normal University)

4. 11:20–11:40

   Closing ceremony and closing panel

   Chair: Hansong Li (American University; Harvard University; East China Normal University)

   Closing panel: Tong Shijun (New York University Shanghai) and Gao Quanxi (Shanghai Jiao Tong University).

5. 12:00–14:00

   Lunch

6. 14:00–16:00

   Optional visit: East China Normal University Archive Centre (Special Collection in Socialist History)

Day 4: Friday, June 19

1. Departures