Wolfgang Behr / 畢鶚 (氒/厥/攸)
behrwolf.bsky.social
Wolfgang Behr / 畢鶚 (氒/厥/攸)
@behrwolf.bsky.social

Traditional China Chair, U. Zurich, Switzerland
https://aoi.uzh.ch/en/sinologie/persons/professoren/behr.html
Messages represent my personal opinion and are not necessarily endorsements

Communication & Media Studies 31%
Political science 20%

Jobs: Reader or Professor in Chinese Studies, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews (apply by Jan 19, 2026): www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPN980/r...
Reader or Professor in Chinese Studies - AC2219 at University of St Andrews
Recruiting now: Reader or Professor in Chinese Studies - AC2219 on jobs.ac.uk. Click for details and explore more academic job opportunities on the top job board
www.jobs.ac.uk

Reposted by Wolfgang Behr

📖 Prix du mémoire sur la Chine contemporaine

Le ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères organise la première édition du prix du mémoire sur la Chine contemporaine.

📅 Date limite de candidature : 15 janvier 2026

🔗 Plus d’infos : www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/le-minist...
A 1842 French sinology article cover with 4 CN characters 其事好还” with Latin trans: “Quod ore prodit ad os revertitur. Prov.”
written by Guillaume Pauthier, who was comparing his own Dao De Jing道德经 trans with Stanislas Julien.
It’s one episode in longrunning debate between the two over trans of DDJ.

Summer school: Models of Dialectical Thought in Chinese and Asian Philosophy (Ljubljana), apply by 30 May 2026: as.ff.uni-lj.si/en/summer-sc...
Summer school: Models of Dialectical Thought in Chinese and Asian Philosophy | Oddelek za azijske študije | Filozofska fakulteta Univerze v Ljubljani
as.ff.uni-lj.si

Then off to the fantastic Gerhard Richter retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vitton today. (Mao, Davos, Graubünden, Vierwaldstättersee).

Wonderful event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the European Association of/for Chinese Studies at the Collège de France yesterday. tinyurl.com/yp8nt3ws
European Association for Chinese Studies 50th Anniversary Event: The European Association for Chinese Studies and the Past, Present and Future of Chinese Studies in Europe – European Association for C...
tinyurl.com

where he entertained us with fantastic stories and fine Belgian beer hidden "from the other missionaries" under his bed. May he continue to r.i.p.!

For a nice obituary see W.S. Coblin in Monumenta Serica 47 (1999):505–514, summarized in the Wikipedia article on Serruys. I had the good fortune of visiting him in the retirement home of his congregation near Leuven shortly before his death with Bill Baxter (UMich.) 3/4

His work on the Fangyan 方言 and Old Chinese dialectology, on the syntax of oracle bone&bronze inscriptions and the Shangshu 尚書, or on children's riddles and ditties from Shanxi were pathbreaking achievements in their time and deserve to be read even today. 2/4

OTD in 1917, Paul Leo-Mary Serruys (d. 16.VIII.1999) was born in Flanders, who spent the first time of his life as a missionary of the Congregatio Immaculati Cordis Mariae in China, the second as one of the leading scholars of Old Chinese philology in the US and Taiwan. 1/4

Meanwhile, here is Feng Shi 馮時's imaginative attempt to make sense of the markings on the ceramic supports: www.bilibili.com/opus/7985362...
馮時:華夏文明考源——柳林溪先民的宇宙觀 - 哔哩哔哩
www.bilibili.com

News about the 7000 year old "earliest Chinese script" from the Liulinxi 柳林溪 site which circulated on the Chinese internet in October are starting to reach English language media: tinyurl.com/dnwvsbyd.

Jobs: Assistant Professor in Southeast Asian Studies at Trinity College Dublin, requiring the ability to teach able to teach e.g. Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Khmer. (apply by 12-Jan-2026), www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DPK381/a...
Assistant Professor in Southeast Asian Studies at Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin
An academic position as a Assistant Professor in Southeast Asian Studies is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.
www.jobs.ac.uk

Reposted by Wolfgang Behr

Out now, #openaccess
Traditional Chinese Children’s Primers: A Sourcebook,
edited by Katherine Ngo and Kelly Ngo
Lever Press
#histchild #histed

doi.org/10.3998/mpub...
Traditional Chinese Children’s Primers: A Sourcebook
Part of the <a href="https://www.leverpress.org/reeditions/">Re-Editions: Literary and Cultural Texts Recovered for the Classroom</a> series. First anthology of traditional Chinese children’s primers ...
doi.org

Hong Kong Baptist University Fellowship Scheme for Ph.D. Students (apply by Dec 1): www.ugc.edu.hk/eng/rgc/fund...

Nice blogpost on (Chinese) Missionary Linguistcs by Otto Zwartjes (Paris), "[Q]uand les langues du monde s’ouvrent aux regards européens", tinyurl.com/yx9sttae.
La linguistique missionnaire : quand les langues du monde s’ouvrent aux regards européens
#LANGAGE EN COMMUN
tinyurl.com

Reposted by James A. Benn

Postdoctoral position in global philology at U. Uppsala (apply by Nov. 26). Specialisations include: Comp./General Lx., Greek and Byzantine Studies, Indology, Iranian Languages, Latin, Semitic Languages, Sinology, and Turkic Languages. tinyurl.com/nhbk8fhh
Postdoctoral position in global philology - Uppsala University
Postdoctoral position in global philology, Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University
tinyurl.com

Postdoctoral Researcher in Linguistics at the Center for the Human Past, "historical linguistics pertaining to one or more language families of Africa, Oceania, and Eurasia" desired: www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...
Postdoctoral Researcher in Linguistics at the Center for the Human Past - Uppsala University
Postdoctoral Researcher in Linguistics at the Center for the Human Past, Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University
www.uu.se

Reposted by Wolfgang Behr

Another disaster in the UK: The Dept of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Nottingham is being closed. Here's a petition:

www.change.org/p/stop-the-r...
Sign the Petition
Stop the removal of Modern Languages courses at the University of Nottingham!
www.change.org

Reposted by Wolfgang Behr

🎓The SERI awards up to 3 scholarships for PhDs at the European University Institute in Florence from 2026–2027
➡️ eui.eu/phd (apply by 15/01/2026)
To the webinar on 21.11.2025, 14:30 (CET) www.eui.eu/events

Super useful tool -- "Chronology of Early China: A Radiocarbon Databank for Chinese Archaeology” out here: doi.org/10.1038/s415...
Chronology of early China: A radiocarbon databank for Chinese archaeology - Scientific Data
Scientific Data - Chronology of early China: A radiocarbon databank for Chinese archaeology
doi.org

"AI has become exceptionally proficient at mastering the grammatical and logical “craft” of language, the “art” of imbuing text with deep emotional resonance and novel imagery remains a significant challenge and a key differentiator for human creativity." Phew, close call!

Interesting new paper on training an LLM to write Tang poetry (doi:10.1038/s40494-025-02087-x), including a Turing test to evaluate results, which concludes:

Reposted by Wolfgang Behr

Reposted by Wolfgang Behr

Hans Conon v d G features in a recent paper on which I was co-author

doi.org/10.1075/hl.0...

Könntest Du mir den bitte schicken? Komm da grad nicht drank, wo ich sitzen. Danke, W

Oh danke, da hab ich wohl zu schnell gegoogelt.

OTD in 1894 Albert Étienne Jean Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie (1845–1894) passed away impoverished in London. To commemorate the extremely productive and pleasantly eccentric "Sino-Babylonian" scholar, I uploaded a little CV (to appear in shortened form in the ODNB) here: tinyurl.com/4nbf96bm.

Félicitations à @lxslcs.bsky.social on the occasion of his new OA volume "Documents géographiques de Dunhuang Guides et traités illustrés, topographies et recueils du Moyen Âge chinois". Go to books.openedition.org/cdf/20307 for a table of contents and download links in different formats.
Documents géographiques de Dunhuang
La découverte au tournant du xxe siècle de milliers de documents dans l’oasis centrasiatique de Dunhuang fut comparable, par son retentissement scientifique, à celle des manuscrits de la mer Morte ou ...
books.openedition.org

True to his first name, these contributions were highly creative, often even playful, but never loosing sight of the serious research questions at their core. ཞི་བདེ་ལ་གཤེགས། & R.i.p.! (3/3)