A fruitful scientific and cultural exchange - this is how the “Forth Eurasian Doctoral Colloquium”, which took place in Beijing on 25-26 March 2023, can be summarized. After two years suspend due to the COVID-19 pandemic, participants of five Eurasian universities met to promote international and cross-regional academic exchanges and mutual research contacts: doctoral students of University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, University of Bonn, Kyungsung University in Korea, Kansai University in Japan, and host Beijing Foreign Studies University.

The theme of this year´s forum titled “Knowledge Transfer and Language Contact from the Perspective of Global History” and formed the basis for many interesting presentations which were organized in different panels. Accompanied by Prof. Ralph Kauz (Department of Sinology/Spokesman of BIGS-OAS), five doctoral students of the BIGS-OAS joined the conference with presentations of their research projects. With positive feedback: Ms. Sherihan Inalo (Department of Islamic Archaeology) won the second prize for outstanding papers with her lecture "Decoding Spolia: Material Expression of the Decision-Making Process Behind Rebuilding in Islamic Syria”.

The conference concluded with a visit to the beautiful Fayuan Temple with two talks about “Chinese Buddhist Education” and “Research Methodology on the History of Buddhist Concepts and Social History”, afterwards there was a common dinner in the monastery premises.

Since 2017, the “Eurasian Doctoral Colloquium” has been held three times in Beijing, Bonn and Seoul. Next year the forum will probably be organized by the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.