Dr. Wai Yip Ho – Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

Dr. Wai Yip Ho

The Education University of Hong Kong
Sociology/Islamic Studies

External Senior Fellow (Marie S. Curie FCFP)
January – July 2017

Last Update: 31.08.2017

Curriculum Vitae

Ho Wai Yip is currently the Associate Professor of Department of Social Sciences, The Education University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Islam and China’s Hong Kong: Ethnic Identity, Muslim Networks and the New Silk Road (Routledge: London, 2015 [paperback]). He is the Foundation Member of BRILL Bibliographic History of Christian-Muslim Relations (Brill Publishing) (China Section), Co-editor of Global South (Springer Publishing), Associate Fellow, Centre of Studying Religion and Culture in Asia, University of Groningen.

He was a Visiting Research Fellow at Zentrum Moderner Orient at Berlin, Visiting Scholar, the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies at Oxford, Visiting Research Fellow, Australian National University, a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at Center of Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies, University of Wollongong, Visiting Researcher, Yemen College of Middle Eastern Studies. He has been the Sir Edward Youde Fellow and was the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.

Being a Christian sociologist in Islamic Studies, his research and teaching interests include China’s Christian-Muslim relations, China-Gulf Relations, new media and Islam, madrasah education in Chinese context.

Selected Publications

(2015) Islam and China’s Hong Kong: Ethnic Identity, Muslim Network and New Silk Road. London: Routledge. (Paperback)
(2015) “On M. Broomhall’s Pioneer Study of Islam in Modern China” Localizing of Islam in China, edited by Chang-kuan Lin. Hong Kong: The Research Institute of the Humanities, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 171-179.
(2014) “From the British Raj to China’s Hong Kong: The Rise of Madrasahs for Ethnic Muslim Youth” Modern Asian Studies (Special Issue on Transnational Religious Networks), Vol. 48, Special Issue 02: 399-432.
(2014) “Emerging Yemeni Community in China: The Socialist Legacy, the New Silk Road Broker and the Chinese Model” Why Yemen Matters: A Society in Transition, edited by Helen Lackner. London: Saqi in association with the London Middle East Institute, SOAS Middle East Issues, pp. 306-317.
(2010) “Islam, China and the Internet: Negotiating Residual Cyberspace between Hegemonic Patriotism & Connectivity to the Ummah”. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 30, No.1, March: 63 – 79.

FRIAS Project

Re-emergence of Middle Eastern Traders in China: Islam, Inter-Asian Connections and the New Silk Road Network

Thanks to China’s new ‘One Belt, One Road’ global initiative, the Middle Eastern and Arab community has been expanding in China, but the phenomenon of Middle Eastern diaspora in China has largely ignored by media nor noticed by mainstream academia. The main purpose of this research project is to study the re-emergence of Middle Eastern and Arab traders as a part of the revival process of Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road in the twenty-first century. The project examines how the rise of Middle Eastern and Arab diasporic community interacts with local Chinese community and how it influences the China’s future ethnic-religious landscape.