About the author

Nora Van den Bosch (ORCID: 0000-0002-1881-5801) is a FRESH doctoral research fellow funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) and a PhD researcher at the EAST (East Asian Studies) Centre of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), where she conducts her research under the supervision of Professor Vanessa Frangville. From 2019 to 2025, she worked as a Data Scientist on the ENP-China and HistText research projects at Aix-Marseille University, directed by Professor Christian Henriot.

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Reflections during the Histories of Education Summer School

Next week I still have two online sessions of the 5th Summer School "Histories of educations," which conclude the series of discussions and talks in Leuven last week. This post will be not a synthesis of the talks and discussions that had taken place, but I will attempt to articulate some of my thoughts and experiences from the past two weeks, in two bullet points.  The added value of the summer school  is the essay discussions. I have never come across a format in which attendants exchange small essays that connect their research project to the main themes and partake in moderated discussions regarding their projects. As somebody who has no formal training in historical research and is basically new- ish to the field, the discussions give me a peek into the "human aspect" of research projects that you can't get from reading articles, and help to contextualize part of my experiences, especially in the context of engaging wuith historical sources. It is also nice...
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Preparing for Summer School "Histories in Flux"

Next month, I will attend the upcoming summer school “Histories in Flux: (Re-)Imagining histories of Education Across Scales, Borders and Boundaries.” The summer school focuses on the question of how to study histories of education that cannot be mapped onto state-centered narratives. I applied to this summer school in a heart beat because it helps me to think how to study Chinese student migration as a transnational phenomenon. Given there is preparation work to do, there is not much time for blogging about something else, for which I apologize. Instead, I share this piece of update on the PhD research.
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Welcome to the Chinese Overseas Education in Belgium (COEB) research blog

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Hello, my name is Nora Van den Bosch, and I am undertaking a PhD project (2026-2029) at the EAST center of the Université Libre de Bruxelles . I specifically research the transnational history of Sino-Belgian educational exchanges (1900–1950), with the focus on the social and political dynamics shaping the Chinese student migration to Belgium. As part of the research I construct a database which traces the overseas Chinese students in Belgium as well as other actors who were part of the educational exchanges. This database, which is currently named the ‘ C hinese O verseas E ducation in B elgium’ database (COEB for short), will be accessible to the public towards the end of the project, hopefully just in time for the hundredth year anniversary of the arrival of the first Chinese Boxer Indemnity scholarship students in Belgium (see group photo). The COEB Research Blog will house my reflections on the research journey and the history and serves as a (temporary) platform for sharing news...
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