Transcultural Studies is an internationally new research domain. However, there is no higher education institution which has set it up as a discipline in the world. Since 2015, Transcultural Studies as a new discipline has been established in Beijing Normal University (BNU) with the cooperation with first-class scholars home and abroad. The rise of this new discipline follows the development of world humanity and social sciences in recent years. 1.Overseas sinology switches from mere literature studies to multidiscipline dialogues, and puts forward the cultural diversity on the platform of the transcultural studies. It shows curiosity about Chinese philology and Chinese folkloristics. 2.Western counterparts improve the transcultural studies by conducting interdiscipline and comprehensive research to enrich the theory of the cultural diversity and elevate the academic status of humanity and social sciences. Scholars from Research Center for Folklore, Classics and Chinese Characters of BNU have conducted comprehensive research on traditional folkloristics, Chinese philology and ancient classics for 16 years, which has laid a solid foundation for the transcultural studies, and offered chances of collaboration with top higher education institutions home and abroad.

The major task of Research Center for Folklore, Classics and Chinese Characters of BNU during the 13th Five-year Plan is to host the key project of “Research for Language, Chinese Character and Folkloristics from the Perspective of Transcultural Studies” under the Ministry of Education of P. R. China. It consists of five interrelated subprograms. 1. Theory and methodology of the transcultural studies. 2. Research of theory of Chinese characters and its application from the perspective of the transcultural studies. 3. Research of overseas sinology from the perspective of the transcultural studies. 4. Research of the spread of ancient Chinese characters in the sinosphere from the perspective of the transcultural studies. 5. Folk culture studies from the perspective of the transcultural studies. The first subprogram provides basic theory and methodology for the entire research direction and supplement to the theoretical construction of the transcultural studies with rich Chinese experiences. The other four subprograms show the profound academic nature of the Center. With the world vision, we try to conduct the research on the most representative Chinese characters and folk culture in the context of the international academia. We maintain the academic features rooted in the Chinese academic traditions. Meanwhile, we learn from the international cutting-edge research to integrate the excellent Chinese culture into the diversely related world cultures, to improve the dialogue and achieve win-win results.

We need to address some essential problems n the construction of the transcultural studies in higher education. For example, in the allocation of the transcultural resources, we try to set up a management mechanism and a way of allocation by sharing the innovation and resources with first-class scholars home and abroad, and actively exploring a sound and scientific evaluation and award system, which is suitable for the basic research and original innovation. In the training of transcultural professionals, we collaborate with scholars from universities in France, United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, Estonia, Russia, India and Japan, etc. to set up joint training PhD programs for future transcultural studies.

We need to take the full advantage of the previous construction to find out new research interests in the transcultural studies, figure out the research direction to innovate theory and strengthen the international communication and cooperation, expand the research in the transcultural studies to make new contributions to the academic development and the cultural construction as well as the encouragement of dialogues among hybrid world cultures.