海角黑料

School of Sociology and Social Policy
 

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Sarah Dauncey

Professor of Chinese Society and Disability, Faculty of Social Sciences

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Biography

Professor Sarah Dauncey is a China specialist with 30 years' experience in visiting and studying China. She joined the School of Sociology and Social Policy in 2016, having previously served as Deputy Head and Director of Teaching at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies. Prior to coming to Nottingham in 2014, she was at the University of Sheffield where she helped to establish the Chinese programmes and served as Deputy Director of the Sheffield Confucius Institute, and before that she was at the University of Durham, where she completed her PhD in late-Ming fashion and women's culture.

Professor Dauncey's present research focuses on disability in China, in particular the way in which the changing Chinese socio-political environment has transformed the cultural encoding of disability from the end of the Cultural Revolution. Her work has been supported by the British Academy, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the Universities China Committee in London, the White Rose East Asia Centre and other organisations. She is co-editor of Writing Lives in China, 1600-2010: Histories of the Elusive Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), as well as various book chapters and articles in key Area Studies and Disability Studies journals. Her pionneering monography was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.

She is currently undertaking a 36-month Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship to explore "Emotional Subjects: Disability, Para-citizenship and Emotions in China". Here she explores the ways in which emotions may be just as fundamental to the ways in which disabled people in China experience citizenship as structural or individual factors. She is examining the various roles emotions play in mobilising the engagement of disabled and non-disabled people with the values and processes of para-citizenship in China; the ways in which disabled people themselves feel about and react to those discourses of belonging and exclusion in the particular realms of bio-medical citizenship, economic citizenship, socio-cultural citizenship, and intimate citizenship; as well as the relationship between prevalent emotional attitudes toward people with impairments and the disablement of people with a wide variety of impairment types.

She is a member of various journal editorial boards, including Disability & Society, The China Quarterly and British Journal of Chinese Studies.

She is an active promoter of Chinese Studies and Chinese language learning. She was the co-founder and co-editor for 6 years of the Journal of the British Association for Chinese Studies (JBACS) and is Honorary President of the Association for Speakers of Chinese as a Second Language (ASCSL). She also works closely with a range of national and international disability charities and disabled persons' organisations.

She is also a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and has received awards at both Sheffield and Nottingham for her excellence in teaching and leadership.

Expertise Summary

Identity politics; disability and welfare; law and society; gender and sexuality, pre-modern and modern Chinese society and culture; Chinese film, literature and life writing; late-imperial women's culture and fashion.

Teaching Summary

Professor Dauncey has substantial experience teaching and examining a wide range of classes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, from lecture courses to language classes, from pre-modern Chinese… read more

Research Summary

Professor Dauncey has pioneered a new field relating to disability in modern Chinese culture. A hugely neglected area of study, her work has focused on the development of new ways of understanding… read more

Recent Publications

  • SHAN CHEN and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2025. How best to protect and respect?: Comparative analysis of intended guardianship in China and lasting power of attorney in England and Wales International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family. 39(1), ebaf037
  • WU, JIAYE, MCLELLAND, NICOLA and DAUNCEY, SARAH, 2022. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2020. Disability in Contemporary China: Citizenship, Identity and Culture Cambridge University Press.
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2017. Shi Tiesheng: Writing Disability into Modern Chinese Fiction Chinese Literature Today. 6(1), 48-55

Professor Dauncey has substantial experience teaching and examining a wide range of classes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, from lecture courses to language classes, from pre-modern Chinese culture to contemporary Chinese society, from research methods to teaching Chinese as a foreign language. In 2009 she was awarded a prestigious Senate Award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching by the University of Sheffield, and in 2016 she was awarded a Lord Dearing Award at the 海角黑料 for her contribution to transformation of teaching in her School and the enhancement of student learning. She is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Since arriving at Nottingham she has convened and/or taught on the following modules:

  • Introducing Social Policy (UG1)
  • Approaches to Chinese Studies (UG1)
  • China: Civilisations, Cultures and Societies (UG1)
  • China: Beyond the Headlines (UG2 and UG4)
  • Dynamics of International Social Policy (UG2 and PGT)
  • Exploring Social and Cultural Life Through Films (UG3)
  • Investigating Social Policy (ESRC, DTC)
  • Dissertation (UG and PGT)

Current Research

Professor Dauncey has pioneered a new field relating to disability in modern Chinese culture. A hugely neglected area of study, her work has focused on the development of new ways of understanding disability in a non-Western context. In particular, she has examined how people with various types of impairment are depicted in different types of media and how these images contribute to the formation and articulation of identities, both collective and individual. She has recently completed a British Academy-funded project entitled 'Disabled but not Useless: Disability and Identity in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture', which focuses on key political personalities (e.g. Zhang Haidi), writers (e.g. Shi Tiesheng, Han Shaogong, Bi Feiyu), film directors (e.g. Xie Jin), whose lives and works have influenced the way in which disabled people are viewed and view themselves in the post-reform era. The results of this project are published in her groundbreaking monograph Disability in China: Citizenship, Identity and Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Professor Dauncey's current research continues to build upon her foundational work on disability culture and identity in modern China. She was commissioned by the Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies to compile the section on 'Disability Studies on China' (2016) and is working on several new intersecting individual and collaborative research projects:

  • Disability and the politics of memory in twentieth century China.
  • Intersection of gender and disability in contemporary China.
  • Special and inclusive education in China.
  • Superhuman, subhuman: mediating Chinese myths of disability.
  • Disability and me: the role of storytelling in empowering Chinese people with disabilities.
  • Representing disability and impairment in Chinese museums and heritage sites.

ORCID ID 0000-0002-9457-8430

Future Research

Nominated as a dedicated outstanding mentor in 2014 at the University of Sheffield, Professor Dauncey is committed to the development of early career researchers. She welcomes PhD students or Master by Research (MRes) students interested in the following areas:

Disability and gender in modern China; identity construction (particularly marginalised groups); the cultural, political and social history of mainland China; literature, film and life writing in modern China; fashion and consumption in mainland China.

  • SHAN CHEN and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2025. How best to protect and respect?: Comparative analysis of intended guardianship in China and lasting power of attorney in England and Wales International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family. 39(1), ebaf037
  • WU, JIAYE, MCLELLAND, NICOLA and DAUNCEY, SARAH, 2022. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2020. Disability in Contemporary China: Citizenship, Identity and Culture Cambridge University Press.
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2017. Shi Tiesheng: Writing Disability into Modern Chinese Fiction Chinese Literature Today. 6(1), 48-55
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2017. Special and Inclusive Education. In: W. J. MORGAN, Q. GU and F. LI, eds., A Handbook of Education in China Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. 290-313
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2017. Gendering the Chinese Disabled Body: Explorations at the Intersections of Disability and Masculinity in Contemporary China NAN N脺: Men, Women and Gender in China. (In Press.)
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2016. Disability Studies. In: TIM WRIGHT, ed., Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies New York: Oxford University Press.
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2014. A Face in the Crowd: Imagining Individual and Collective Disabled Identities in Contemporary China Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. 25(2), 130-165
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2013. Breaking the Silence? Deafness, Disability and Education in Two Post-Cultural Revolution Chinese Films. In: MARJA MOGK, ed., Different Bodies: Disability in Film & Television Jefferson: McFarland. 75-88
  • MARJORIE DRYBURGH and SARAH DAUNCEY, eds., 2013. Writing Lives in China 1600-2010: Histories of the Elusive Self London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2013. Whose Life is it Anyway? Disabled Life Stories in Post-reform China. In: MARJORIE DRYBURGH and SARAH DAUNCEY, eds., Writing Lives in China 1600-2010: Histories of the Elusive Self London: Palgrave Macmillan. 182-205
  • MARJORIE DRYBURGH and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2013. Chinese Life Writing: Themes and Variations. In: Writing Lives in China 1600-2010: Histories of the Elusive Self London: Palgrave Macmillan. 21-56
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2012. Three Days to Walk: A Personal Story of Life Writing and Disability Consciousness in China Disability and Society. 27(3), 311-323
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2011. Screening Disability in the PRC: The Politics of Looking Good. In: TAK-WING NGO, ed., Contemporary China Studies Volume 4: Social Cleavages and Forms of Marginalization London: Sage Publications.
  • AIMIN CHENG, DAVID HOLM, DAVID HONEY and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2008. Quotations from Confucius Shanghai: Foreign Languages Press.
  • AIMIN CHENG, DAVID HOLM, DAVID HONEY and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2008. Quotations from Mencius Shanghai: Foreign Languages Press.
  • AIMIN CHENG, DAVID HOLM, DAVID HONEY and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2008. Quotations from Laozi Shanghai: Foreign Languages Press.
  • AIMIN CHENG, DAVID HOLM, DAVID HONEY and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2008. Quotations from Zhuangzi Shanghai: Foreign Languages Press.
  • AIMIN CHENG, DAVID HOLM, DAVID HONEY and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2008. Verses from Tang Poetry Shanghai: Foreign Languages Press.
  • AIMIN CHENG, DAVID HOLM, DAVID HONEY and SARAH DAUNCEY, 2008. Famous Chinese Sayings Shanghai: Foreign Languages Press.
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2007. Screening Disability in the PRC: The Politics of Looking Good China Information. 21(3), 481-506
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2007. Sartorial Modesty and Genteel Ideals in the Late Ming. In: DARIA BERG and CHLO脣 STARR, eds., The Quest for Gentility in China: Negotiations beyond Gender & Class London: Routledge. 134-154
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2003. Illusions of Grandeur: Perceptions of Status and Wealth in Late-Ming Female Clothing & Ornamentation East Asian History. 25/26, 43-68
  • SARAH DAUNCEY, 2003. Bonding, Benevolence, Barter and Bribery: Female Gift-Giving and Social Communication in the Jin Ping Mei Nann眉: Men, Women and Gender in Early & Imperial China. 5(2), 203-239

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海角黑料
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