David O'brien

Dr David O’Brien’s research project entitled ‘Narrating the ‘new silk road’: Chinese ‘huayuquan’ (discourse power) in OBOR/BRI externally-directed propaganda’ has received a grant of 1.2 million zloty from the prestigious programme POLONEZ BIS-2 of the Polish National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki).

He graduated with a PhD in Asian Studies from the National University of Ireland (Cork) in 2013 with a thesis entitled People and Place in the New Frontier: An Examination of the Construction of Han and Uyghur Ethnic Identities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

He was formerly at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany (2019-2023) and before that at the Chinese campus of Nottingham University (2013-2019). His work explores ethnic identity and ethnic policy in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.

His research has appeared in China Quarterly, International Politics, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Asian Ethnicity, among others. Hi is co-author with Melissa Shani Brown of People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China: Territories of Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Dr O’Brien frequent contributor to international media and has appeared in the Financial Times, Reuters, Washington Post, AP, Deutsch Welle, Irish Times, RTE Radio and Television (Irish national broadcaster), Global and Mail, El Mercurio (paper of record in Chile), Helsingin Sanomat (paper of record in Finland).

He is also the co-founder and co-director of the Irish Uyghur Cultural Association

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Ethnic identity in China, esp. Xinjiang
China's ethnic identity policy
China's Western development economic policy and BRI
China-Central Asian relations
Chinese Communist Party leadership
Ethnographic research methodologies

PUBLICATIONS

Books

O’Brien, David and Brown, Melissa Shani. People, Place, Race, and Nation in Xinjiang, China: Territories of Identity. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. ISBN 9789811937750
Collins, Neil and O’Brien, David The Politics of Everyday China. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.

Journal Articles

Collins, Neil and O’Brien, David. ‘Neo-mercantilism in action: China and small states.’ International Politics, November 2022. DOI:10.1057/s41311-022-00419-3
Brown, Melissa Shani and O'Brien, David. ‘Making the Past Serve the Present': The Testimonial Tourist Gaze and Infrastructures of Memory in Xinjiang (XUAR) China.’ Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, 2022. DOI:10.1177/18681026221121828
Smith, Nicholas Ross and O’Brien, David. ‘Responding to China’s crimes against humanity in Xinjiang: why dialogue is the only pathway for the emerging coalition of the willing.’ Global Affairs, May 2021. DOI:10.1080/23340460.2021.1921605
O'Brien, David. "Uyghurs." In Oxford Bibliographies in Chinese Studies. Ed. Tim Wright. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Zhang, Xiaoling, O’Brien, David and Brown, Melissa Shani. ‘‘No CCP, No New China’: discourses of pastoral power in the Xinjiang region of China’, China Quarterly, No. 235, September 2018.
O’Brien, David. “The Mountains are High and the Emperor is Far Away: An Examination of Ethnic Violence in Xinjiang,” International Journal of Chinese Studies 2(2) (2011): 389-406.
Melissa Shani Brown & David O’Brien (2019) Defining the right path: aligning Islam with Chinese socialist core values at Ningbo’s Moon Lake Mosque, Asian Ethnicity, DOI: 10.1080/14631369.2019.1636637

Edited Volume

Chan, Hing Kai, Faith Ka Shun Chan, and David O'Brien, eds. International Flows in the Belt and Road Initiative Context: Business, People, History and Geography. New York: Palgrave McMillan 2020.

Book Chapters

Brown, Melissa Shani und O'Brien, David. Becoming-Chinese - Sinicisation, nation, and race in Xinjiang, China," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. DOI:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.ORE_COM-01333.R2.
O'Brien, David und Brown, Melissa Shani. Imagined Minorities: Making real images of ethnic harmony", in Rawnlsey, Gary, Ma, Yiban und Pothang, Kruakae (eds) Elgar Handbook Of Political Communication. London: Edward Elgar, 2021. DOI: 10.4337/9781789906424.
Brown, Melissa Shani. and O'Brien, David.'Whose China Dream is it Anyway?': temporalities of 'ethnicity' in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang´ in Farley, J. (ed) Redefining "Propaganda" in Modern China: Movements, Policies, Producers, and Aesthetics, 1949-2012. Routledge: London, 2021. DOI: 10.4324/9780429296505-17
O'Brien, David. 'The Complexity of Nationalism and National Identity in 21st Century Xinjiang,' in Lu, Zhouxiang (ed.) Chinese National Identity in the Age of Globalisation. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillian, 2020.
Brown, Melissa Shani, and David O'Brien. "The significance of silence: Variations in perceptions and experiences of "silence" in international classroom settings." In Academic Experiences of International Students in Chinese Higher Education, pp. 62-83. Routledge, 2020
O'Brien, David, and Melissa Shani Brown. 'Ethnic Heritage'on the New Frontier. In Ludwig, Carol, Yiwen Wang, and Linda Walton, eds. The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage. Amsterdam University Press, 2020.
O’Brien, David. “If there is harmony in the house there will be order in the nation: An exploration of the Han Chinese as Political Actors in Xinjiang”. In Inside China’s New Frontier: Analysing Space, Place and Power in China’s North-West, edited by Anna Hayes and Michael Clarke. London: Routledge 2015.
O’Brien, David. “Violence and identity – the ‘self’ and the ‘other’: An exploration of ethnic relations and conflict in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”. In Asian Studies – Within and Without, edited by Fan Hong and Peter Herrman. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Press, 2013.

Contact: david.obrien@uj.edu.pl

Faculty of International and Political Studies, Władysława Reymonta, room 123.