Happy International Women’s Day

国际妇女节快乐!

What does International Women’s Day mean to you? Different people may have different focuses. At Queen’s, the campaign theme for this year is #EmbraceEquity

Imagine a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together we can forge women’s equality. Collectively we can all #EmbraceEquity

Queen’s gender initiative

Today, we are pleased to introduce WANG Xinxin, a Queen’s School of Law student (LLM candidate in International Commercial & Business Law) to share her feel of being a departing daughter from her family, a female international student with great passion for her study and intercultural life in Belfast and elsewhere, through quoting the lines from one of her favourite ancient poems, the Ballad of Mulan.

We also thank WANG Xinxin for kindly sharing her Instagram account with us, which includes a video clip of greeting messages to her family and to all, in Chinese. If you have difficulties in understanding Mandarin, just click this Instagram post to read the English lines she added in the comment area.

We would like to invite all to come join in this is a special day of greeting and a call for celebration. Tell us how you celebrate this special day in the reply box below. We would love to hear more stories from you, too.

We also look forward to welcoming you to participate in the upcoming ‘Sound of Language’ – QUB Multilingual Poetry and Music Festival on Thursday 23 March, with Xinxin and many others.

More cultural events updated

The first half of the CNY celebrations went on extremely well, featuring the student-led Interactive Chinese Culture Displays and Demos, the CNY2023 Launch Event, and the art exhibitions both online and in-person. We would like to send our ‘thank-you’ to all of you who have contributed, participated in and helped with promotion. We hope that you have enjoyed yourselves.

In the following part of the CNY Programme, we continue to warmly welcome you to attend a series of culture talks, a fun time table tennis event and a guzheng introductory workshop. All QUB students and staff members are welcome!

More information and registration

Click below for registration and viewing the full programme

QUB Chinese student won conference Talks Prize

Congratulations for Yiming HUANG (黄一鸣), a third-year PhD candidate, who recently won the Talks Prize 1 at the 73rd Irish Universities Chemistry Research Colloquium!

There were 72 second year PhD students who gave poster presentations and 40 third year PhD students who gave talks…

It was my first time speaking at an open conference. Therefore I felt very lucky and honoured to be the only Chinese person to win the prize.

All of the PhD candidates in attendance were excellent in their research and most were from local universities in Ireland. Queen’s University Belfast was the only participating university from the UK, according to Yiming.

I’m with Prof. Steven E.J. Bell’s group, based in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. The primary area of study for our group is the development of novel nanomaterials for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). My talk at the conference focused on controlling nanoparticle aggregates for stable SERS, which is the project I worked on the entire previous year.

Winning tips

I believe the award could not have been given to me without the following factors. Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Bell, for his excellent guidance in the content of my presentation during the preparation stage. He pointed out that rather than a bunch of data, people prefer to hear a complete story, which was really inspired me. Secondly, to keep the audience interested and prevent them from becoming tired of listening, I used some videos, cartoons and real-life photos to better illustrate my stuff. For example, I made a comparison between my polymer network with nanoparticle aggregates and noodles network with meatballs. In addition, I paid attention to the pace of my presentation and established eye contact with the audience rather than just talking to myself, which enabled the audience to follow my thoughts.

We hope that these tips will be of help to the new comers and also send our best wishes to Yiming for a great success in her PhD research and future career.

If you have similar stories to share with us your successes in study and work, you are very welcome to contact us by leaving your messages below in the comment box.

Chinese course enrolment and call for volunteers

With the approaching of the new semester we are pleased to announce that the Language Centre course enrolment starts at 00:30 on Thursday 1st September. We offer over 80 classes in 14 different languages, including Chinese, that have both online and in person teaching. All classes will commence week beginning Monday 10 Oct 2022.

Online registration will be closed on Thursday 6 Oct and we welcome all to make an early registration as courses are extremely popular and fill up quickly.

Class schedule and registration links are accessible via Language Centre website.

Chinese language courses are offered from level 1 to level 5.

Call for volunteers

We are looking for talented students and staff members to volunteer for our Chinese language and cultural events at Queen’s. It could be in the form of a variety of cultural performances, or language/culture-related topics and skills, and is open to both Chinese-speaking and non-Chinese speaking volunteers.

We look forward to working with you in our future events.

Read the Chinese version here.

Happy graduation

It was another day filled with celebrations, music, champagne, and smiles on campus as graduation continues. While we would like to say congratulations to all our graduates, we dedicate this special post to two students –

On Friday 1st July, Isabella (苏蔓伊) and Caleb (白威凯), two students from Queen’s Management School on International Business with Mandarin Chinese degree pathways, rejoiced with their families and their teacher Dr Liang WANG to cheer for their successful graduation from Queen’s.

Celebrations with a forget-me-not photo

They are the first cohort of graduates following this pathway at Queen’s and they deserve the great efforts after spending 3 years of study plus one year work placement. Congratulations!

We would like to send our very best wishes for their future and hope that they learn from what they have experienced for the preparation for what they aim to achieve.

千里之行,始于足下
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

For any students who are interested in our International Business with Mandarin Chinese programme, please visit the course page.

Continue reading

One day in London

Monday 28th March – What an intense and packed day at the UCL Institute of Education for our students Isabella and Caleb from Queen’s Management School, together with Dr Liang Wang from The Language Centre, to help with promoting the University and its International Business with Mandarin Chinese programme, among a cohort of a dozen of universities from the rest of the UK. 

It was great to be in attendance at the UK Schools and Universities Day 2022, sharing details of our offer, listening to what prospective students’ interests and concerns are, and joining in discussions on how to strengthen the ties between schools and universities across the UK in terms of Chinese language provision. As a final year student of International Business with Chinese, Isabella noted that: 

‘I learned a lot about what other universities across the UK were offering in relation to studying Mandarin Chinese, and spoke to staff of universities and schools from whom I understood there is a demand for studying Mandarin at university, particularly in conjunction with other subjects, such as business, sciences, arts, law and other languages.’ 

For any students who are interested in our International Business with Mandarin Chinese programme, please visit the course page.