Ms Liu Jingfang attended the course last year. She is currently
studying for the degree of MSc Migration and Ethnic Studies
at the University of Amsterdam.
This is her story about the course:
I attended the SDiE course at Renmin University given by
Professor Peverelli from VU University, Amsterdam in the
summer of 2010.
Originally I was just curious to see if there were any different
teaching styles between Chinese and Dutch professors in order
to bridge my learning experience between the two countries.
Looking back this only contributed to a small portion of my
overall gain from the course. Indeed the course orientations,
arrangements and classroom atmosphere was closer to what I
experienced thus far in the Netherlands, but what I even benefited
more was the contents of the course itself and the qualitative based
research methods.
In terms of course content I learned to acknowledge that
“entrepreneurs” are socially constructed and “entrepreneurship”
is a process of enabling, or restraining, contingent on various
social dimensions such as gender and ethnicity.
Within these dimensions, one can turn restrains into opportunities.
Methodologically speaking, the course equipped me with a very
practical tool, namely the social network analysis to examine a
given process of establishing and expanding business opportunities.
I even adopted the similar methodological strategy when I did the
case studies of the Chinese business people in Amsterdam.
All this made me realize that everyone can become an entrepreneur
in the business world so long as they become aware of their social
capital and put them into practice. It is more of a cultivated,
self-reflective rather than an innate ability. More broadly speaking
everyone can become the entrepreneurs of their own life. It’s more
about the spirit, the initiatives and the ways of thinking.
Overall this is a very well-organized and stimulating, entertaining
and inspiring course.
In case you have any questions, you can send Jingfang and email.