Professor Javier Orduña, new local director of the Confucius Institute of Barcelona
Proposed by the Vice-Rector for Outreach and Internationalization, Àlex Aguilar, the board of trustees of the Confucius Institute of Barcelona Foundation has appointed Javier Orduña, professor of German Philology, as new local director of the Confucius Institute of Barcelona, replacing Helena Casas-Tost, lecturer of East Asian Studies and Translation at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Orduña will co-manage the center teaming up with the Chinese director, Professor Shiru Chang, professor of Spanish at the Beijing Foreign Studies University.
Proposed by the Vice-Rector for Outreach and Internationalization, Àlex Aguilar, the board of trustees of the Confucius Institute of Barcelona Foundation has appointed Javier Orduña, professor of German Philology, as new local director of the Confucius Institute of Barcelona, replacing Helena Casas-Tost, lecturer of East Asian Studies and Translation at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Orduña will co-manage the center teaming up with the Chinese director, Professor Shiru Chang, professor of Spanish at the Beijing Foreign Studies University.
Javier Orduña, scholar of several Asian languages, such as Chinese, has been professor of German Philology since 1993 and was dean of the Faculty of Philology. His transfer activity has been focused on the normalization of second languages in secondary education and he has dedicated his research to the uses of resources from linguistic typology for the grammatical contrast in language contact.
Confucius institutes aim to promote Chinese learning and the academic exchange, as well as spreading the culture of this Asian country. Apart from the regulated language course offerings, educational activities also include teacher training or organization of international contests and language camps in China. The academic exchange is specially based on study grants in China and the consolidation of thematic networks for different fields: translation and interpreting, arts and music, history and anthropology, economics, medicine, and urbanism. Good evidence for this is the organization of two international Latin American study conferences on China. Civic outreach ranges from participation in popular Chinese culture contests (Lunar New Year; Dragon Boat Festival, etc.) to cycles of gastronomy, music and cinema.
Within this network of more than 500 Confucius institutes worldwide, the one in Barcelona, awarded this year with the 3rd Award Chinese Chair of Madrid, which counts with the collaboration of the UB, UAB and the public entity Casa Àsia, outstands for the amount of relations it has set up with all the public universities in Catalonia and Andorra, in the so called Macro-Confucius. The network enables the coordination of initiatives to disseminate the Chinese language and culture, and provides an effective service regarding level tests.