Mentoring is fundamentally different from teaching, advising, and supervising. The asymmetry of knowledge is different in that the mentee possesses information about their own interests and motivations that—at least at the beginning—is unknown to the mentor. The asymmetry of power also tends to be different, as (unlike a supervisor) the mentor cannot approve or deny the mentee’s actions. Join us for a discussion of the nature of mentorship, and to learn techniques that mentors and mentees alike can use throughout their careers to bring out the best in others. Drawing on Christopher Rea and Thomas Mullaney’s book Where Research Begins, the conversation will cover one-on-one mentoring, peer mentoring, self-mentoring, and mentoring at scale, in the classroom and beyond.

Christopher Rea is Professor of Asian Studies and former Director of the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia. A native of Berkeley, California, he earned a BA from Dartmouth College and a PhD from Columbia University, and has been a visiting fellow at Harvard University and at universities in Taiwan and Australia. His books include Where Research Begins: Choosing a Research Project That Matters to You (and the World) (University of Chicago Press, 2022, with Tom Mullaney), Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949 (2021), The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection (2017, with Bruce Rusk), and The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (2015). He was awarded UBC’s Killam Research Prize in 2023.