China veteran Ian Johnson, author of China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future (September 2023), announces he will leave as senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and move from New York to Berlin. He will work as a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and work from Berlin starting on July 1, 2024, writing a new book on the misuses of religion in Xi’s China in the summer of 2024.
In his farewell piece, he explains why he picked Berlin:
Why? Emotionally, I love New York but I have felt what the Chinese call yuanfen (affinity) with Berlin ever since I went there before the Wall fell. After leaving Montreal as a teenager, I didn’t feel at home in many places but Berlin–as messed up as it was and is–immediately felt like home. I spent more than a decade there and it was my base for all the years I spent in China.
Now we have a great chance to return to Berlin. I’ll be a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. This is modeled on (and in fact its official English name is) the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Princeton-based center for natural and social scientists. I’ll work on my next book there, on religious life in Xi’s China–hint, it has to do with folk religion, pilgrimages, and stick fighting.
Meanwhile, while my wife Sim Chi Yin can be a bit closer to her artistic practice–she’s represented by a gallery there and often works in Europe’s colonial archives.
His full article you can find here.
His earlier stories can be found here.
