Confucius Institute - 10 years at the University of Southampton (2011-2021)

The Confucius Institute, housed at the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton, has reached its tenth anniversary this year. During the past ten years, the Institute has developed from what was originally a teaching centre to today's multi-level, multi-type and multi-location organisation. In addition to the university centre, there are three affiliated Confucius Classrooms and three teaching centres which provide credit and non-credit courses, lunch clubs, after-school programmes and evening classes in Chinese language and culture.

As of December 2020, these courses have been attended by more than 24,500 students and more than 200 cultural events have been held with over 35,000 participants. The Institute has become an important base for Chinese language teaching, teacher training, academic research and Sino-British communication in the south of the UK.

We have made a short video to mark the journey the Institute has undertaken. In this, the four current CI Board members, Alex Neill, Sarah Pearce, Ying Zheng, and Ruoling Zheng talk about their views of the Institute in Southampton. Mark Cranshaw (former CI director) and Louise Tyler (an MLL/CI student) also talk about the past and future of the Institute.