Center for Chinese Studies

Chloe Qiu

CCS Undergraduate Student Liaison

Chloe Qiu (邱灿融) is an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, pursuing a double major in Japanese Language and Data Science. Her academic interests encompass modern Chinese literature, culture, and media.

Clara (Gi-yan) So

CCS Undergraduate Student Liaison

Clara So (苏芷昕) is an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in Chinese and Psychology. Her academic interests include premodern and modern Chinese language and literature, as well as developmental psychology and early childhood education.

CCS Working Groups

The Center for Chinese Studies Working Group program is in support of research in the humanities and the social sciences, and provide opportunities for smaller groups of Berkeley faculty and advanced graduate students to share their research in progress, garner thoughtful and detailed feedback on papers or grants, brainstorm new projects, and discuss the latest published research related to their working group.

The Working Group awards range from $250-$750 for the academic year. New Working Groups have one full year to use the award funds. The funds can be used...

Skye VanValkenburgh

Program Coordinator
Center for Chinese Studies

Skye VanValkenburgh (吴思凯) manages all aspects of the Visiting Scholar Program at CCS. She earned her B.A. in Chinese from San Francisco State University and is an alumni of the Chinese Language Flagship Program. As part of the Flagship Program, Skye studied Chinese language and culture intensively at National Taiwan University, conducted several summer internships in Taiwan, and completed a yearlong intensive language capstone at Nanjing University, which included a six-month internship as the Program Assistant for the American Councils Chinese Language Flagship Nanjing Center. She...

Xiaojie Ma

Program Director
Center for Chinese Studies

Xiaojie Ma (马晓洁) manages the Center for Chinese Studies' programs, lectures and conferences and administrative matters. She holds a B.A. in English from University of International Business and Economics, and a Master's Degree in Pacific International Affairs from University of California, San Diego, with a career track of International Management. Prior to joining the CCS team, she served as the Program Manager from 2008-2012, and Assistant Director from 2013-2018 at the UCLA Confucius Institute, working on connecting the dots, filling the gaps and tapping into the tremendous resources...

Lowell Dittmer

Alma Lowell Dittmer, a professor and writer who worked at UC Berkeley for 40 years and specialized in Chinese politics, died on April 15 in Oakland. He was 82.

He was named after his father Alma, but throughout his life went by his middle name, Lowell. His parents Alma and Veda met when they themselves were both teachers at a junior high school in Utah. They would both spend much of their life teaching; Alma as a university professor of music; his wife as a K-12 teacher with specialties in Home Economics and Remedial Reading. Lowell was the eldest of their six children, and they...