Introduction

  • María Luz Suárez Castiñeira University of Deusto, Spain
  • Xiaotong Zhang Wuhan University, China
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18543/ced.2553
Keywords: European Union, Asia Pacific, Central Asia, interregional dialogue, civil society

Abstract

Beyond trade, investment, geostrategic and security challenges, as well as issues of connectivity and governance, the European Union-Asia Pacific dialogue has also boosted the involvement of civil society in international politics. The involvement of civil society can contribute to enhancing mutual trust and knowledge as well as democratization processes and channels for citizen participation in social issues that have an impact on people’s lives. However, in the last decade, internal crises both in the EU and in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as a lack of political will on both sides to support the discussion of issues in non-official processes, seem to have slowed down the intensity of interregional interaction and cooperation between civil society organizations. This special issue of Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto (CED) / Deusto Journal of European Studies on “European Union-Asia Pacific social and cultural dialogue: involving civil society in interregional relations” aims to make a contribution to the knowledge and understanding of some of the major actors and factors that determine the evolution of social and cultural interregional dialogue.

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Author Biographies

María Luz Suárez Castiñeira, University of Deusto, Spain

Professor at the University of Deusto. After graduating in English and German Philology from the Free University of Brussels, she received her PhD in Comparative European Literature at the University of the Basque Country (1992). Since then she has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the University of Deusto in Modern Languages, Modern Languages and Management, and International Relations as well as in the Erasmus Mundus Master Programme Euroculture. She has done her research in the field of comparative literature, first, and later, since 2003, in the field of European Integration, focusing her study on its cultural dimension. She has also participated in several European projects around inter- and transcultural dialogue, the construction of European identity and the dimension of multilingualism and its relationship with the concept of European citizenship. Among other responsibilities, she has been vicedean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, director of the Institute of European Studies and director of the Department of International Relations and Humanities. Currently, she is actively involved in the edition and publication of the Journal Cuadernos Europeos de Deusto, of which she is deputy editor-in-chief.

Xiaotong Zhang, Wuhan University, China

Chair of the Academic Committee of the Centre for Economic Diplomacy, Wuhan University, Professor of Institute of Belt and Road Initiative & Global Governance, Fudan University, Member of Advisory Committee for Economic and Trade Policy (Economic Diplomacy Subcommittee) of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. He used to work at the U.S. Desk of Chinese Ministry of Commerce, and serve as Trade Attaché at the Chinese Mission to the European Union in Brussels between 2004 and 2010. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in political science at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium. He published Brussels Diary, a biography about his working experiences as a trade diplomat, and China’s Economic Diplomacy in the 21st Century, an edited volume on China’s economic diplomacy in the first ten years of the 21st century. Dr. Zhang was a visiting scholar at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University in 2014-2015. His major research interests include economic diplomacy, geopolitics, and European studies

Published
2022-10-28
How to Cite
Suárez Castiñeira, María Luz, and Xiaotong Zhang. 2022. “Introduction”. Deusto Journal of European Studies, no. 05 (October), 19-29. https://doi.org/10.18543/ced.2553.
Issue
No. 05 (2022): SPECIAL ISSUE. European Union-Asia Pacific social and cultural dialogue: involving civil society in interregional relations
Section
Introduction

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