The issue of globalization has long been a subject that has garnered the attention of the international academic community. In June 2019, Professor Ottmar Ette and Professor Ruan Wei engaged in a discussion on this topic at Hunan Normal University.

Ottmar Ette has been Chair of Romance Literature at the University of Potsdam, Brandenburg since 1995. His research and teaching focus on Alexander von Humboldt, literary studies as a science of life, living-together or “conviviality,” and TransArea Studies. He has written nineteen scholarly books in addition to a wide range of scholarly articles. Currently, he directs the Research Project on “Alexander von Humboldt’s American Travel Diaries: Genealogy, Chronology, and Epistemology” (2014-2017) and, since 2015, an eighteen-year project on “Travelling Humboldt: Science on the Move” of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Ruan Wei is Xiaoxiang Professor at Hunan Normal University and Director of the Center for Western Studies at Shenzhen University. His areas of research are contemporary British fiction, comparative culture and civilization, and Western Classical studies. He is also the author of The Performance of Civilizations, columnist for Guangming Daily, and author for Dushu Monthly.