Britain is the global leader in the creative industries, whereas China is the powerhouse in publishing and its role has never been more prominent. Cypress Books are holding a dynamic seminar exploring the expanding opportunities for exchange between China and the UK.

Leading experts will discuss the challenges facing the flow of books between the two countries, and share how collaboration and translation have helped to break down barriers. The event will provide a meaningful platform for the exchange of ideas and best practices within the industry.

Speakers and the Panelist:

Angus Phillips is Director of Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies and Director of Confucius Institute at Oxford Brookes. He has degrees from Oxford and Warwick universities, and before joining Oxford Brookes he ran a trade and reference list at Oxford University Press. He works as a consultant to the publishing industry and is often invited to speak at international conferences and events. His recent books include Inside Book Publishing (with Giles Clark) and Turning the Page: The evolution of the book. He is on the European Advisory Board of Princeton University Press and was a judge for the Bookseller industry awards for four years in a row from 2010 to 2013. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the premier publishing journal Logos.

Charles Aylmer is Head of the Chinese Department at Cambridge University Library since 1986. After graduating in Chinese from Cambridge, he studied Philosophy and Palaeography at Peking University. He taught in the Faculty of Oriental Studies and was involved in several research projects before being appointed to his present post in 1986.

Emma Goodliffe is Curator of the Chinese collections at the British Library. She holds a degree in Oriental Studies: Chinese (with Japanese) from the University of Oxford and began working at the British Library in 2012 as International and Data Support Assistant for the International Dunhuang Project (IDP). She joined the Chinese section in June 2015 and began managing the Chinese section’s retro-conversion and cataloguing projects in July 2016.

Frances Wood is a librarian, sinologist and historian. Following a pre-diploma course at Liverpool College of Art 1966-1967, she studied Chinese at Newnham College, Cambridge, 1967-1971. She spent 1975-1976 at Peking University after a worker-peasant-soldier student course in Chinese history and wrote her PhD on traditional domestic architecture in Peking 1860-1930 (Percival David Foundation, 1984). Dr Wood worked for a year in the Department of Printed Books in the British Museum before moving to SOAS in 1972 to work in the Chinese section of the Library with John Lust until 1977. She joined the British Library and worked in the Chinese section there until 2013. In recent years she has lectured on Chinese architecture and book history in the V&A, the British Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts, Sotheby’s and Christie’s education departments and for the SOAS Post-Graduate Diploma in Asian Art and SOAS specialist art courses. She has written a number of books on Chinese history and culture.

Helen Wang holds a BA degree in Chinese from SOAS, University of London. She has translated, written and edited multiple books and articles, and has been the Curator of East Asian Money at the British Museum since 2015. She is also a London-based contributor to Paper Republic and co-tweets with translator Nicky Harman on @cfbcuk (China Fiction Book Club UK). She is one of the four editors of Read Paper Republic. In September 2016, she started a new project – Chinese books for young readers. She won the 2017 Marsh Award for Literature in Translation for her translation of Bronze and Sunflower by Cao Wenxuan.

Shihui Weng is the Shakespeare Folio Translation Project Manager at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The Folio Translation Project is a 8-year endeavour to produce new translations of Shakespeare’s First Folio into Mandarin, explicitly for performances. Before joining the RSC, she was an Associate Producer at the National Theatre of Scotland. Her producing credits include a Season of New Plays from China (co-production with Oran Mor), Dragon (co-production with VoxMotus and Tianjin People’s Arts Theatre), Black Watch (International Tour), Dunsinane (International Tour), Monster in the Hall (International Tour). She was also a Cultural Advisor (China) for Creative Scotland in 2014-2015.