At the launch of BCCDS in 2010, the core working group consisted of two KU Leuven researchers, Prof. Lutgard Lams (Faculty of Arts) and Prof. Frank Gotzen (Law Faculty). At the Brussels Campus of KU Leuven, both disciplines of communication and law studies (in particular IPR studies) had a longstanding history and provided the BCCDS with sound academic pillars. Over the years, international researchers with expertise in Chinese language and discourse have joined the team: Prof. Qing Cao (Durham University) and Prof. Chris Shei (Swansea University). In addition, Ph.D. students have enriched the group with their research projects: Ying Xu (KU Leuven Campus Brussels), Chen Yiming (Charles University, Prague/VUB, Brussels), Lin Hsien-ming (KU Leuven Social Sciences/NSYSU, Kaohsiung). While Frank Gotzen retired from his active teaching position, he still remains the group's Senior Advisor. BCCDS's interdisciplinary nature is now situated in the areas of media and political communication, linguistic pragmatics and discourse studies, and regional studies (China/Taiwan). 

This website primarily lists events organised by BCCDS, Brussels (see page 'BCCDS in Brussels') and a selection of its outreach activities (workshops/seminars, conference participation, lectures) (see page 'BCCDS Outreach) by BCCDS member Lutgard Lams. For more information about activities by BCCDS members Prof. Qing Cao and Prof. Chris Shei, see their personal webpages at the link down this page.

Prof. Dr. Lutgard Lams 

Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven Campus Brussels

Prof. Dr. Chris Chi-Chiang Shei

Associate Professor, Department of Applied Linguistics College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University

Prof. Dr. Qing Cao

Associate Professor, School of Modern Languages and Cultures

Durham University, UK

Academic Associate

Ying Xu is a Ph.D. student, supervised by Prof. Lutgard Lams at the Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven Campus Brussels. She obtained her M.A. in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages from CCNU (Central China Normal University). Her research topic is “Specific Roles and Types of Presupposition in Chinese Media Discourse”, which aims to analyze the discursive features of Chinese official narratives, and explore the relationship between presupposition and ideology through several case studies.

Academic Affiliate

dr. Yiming Chen received his PhD in media and communication studies at the Uppsala University (Sweden) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB-Free University of Brussels). He holds a lectureship at the School of Journalism & Communication of Jinan University, Guangzhou. Before joining Jinan University, Yiming gained fruitful experiences as a TV news presenter and journalist in China. While his research interests are in the fields of Chinese discourse and identity studies, media politics, and speech communication, he mainly focuses on Chinese media professional identities from a poststructuralist discursive perspective.

Public Relations Affiliate

dr. Hsien-Ming Lin received his PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre at KU Leuven (Belgium), in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of Political Science at National Sun Yat-sen University (Taiwan). His research interests include Migration Studies and International Mobility, Taiwanese Immigrant and Overseas Chinese, Ethnicity and Identity Studies, and Political Economy. His research has been published in Review of Social Science, Information Society Research, The Hong Kong Journal of Social Science, Journal of Population Studies, and Intercultural Communication Studies.