Dr. Urbansky will focus his discussion on the history of the Chinese diaspora during the late Tsarist Empire and the early Soviet Union. He will analyze the correlation between negative attributions and conflicts between Chinese immigrants and Europeans in urban spaces during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – a period marked by the proliferation of pejorative notions in North America and among European colonial powers.

Sören Urbansky is a historian of Russia and China in the modern era, specializing in imperial and racial entanglements, migration, infrastructure, and the history of borders. He currently the Chair/Professor of the Eastern European History at Ruhr University Bochum.