About the Topic: Immunity is a dream of protection from being alive. On the Mongol steppe, it has taken many forms ― imperial privilege, socialist collectivization, nationalist enclosure ― each one promising to shelter life in sovereign protection. Today, sovereignty is under pressures it cannot control, generating symptoms it cannot contain. From within this impasse, Steppe Immunity asks what comes after. Drawing on fieldwork, archival research, and the histories, poetry, and ecologies of the steppe, Christian Sorace traces immunity from Chinggisid sovereignty to the present. Against understandings of immunity as separation or exemption, the book reimagines it as the basis of a life in common. The steppe is not a refuge outside history. It is a constellation of past and future possibilities, emanating light. About the Speaker: Christian Sorace is an Associate Professor of Global China at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. From 2017 to late 2022, he was an Assistant Professor at Colorado College. His work explores political concepts and practices in China and Mongolia, spanning the study of ideology, discourse, urban planning, air pollution, and aesthetics. In 2022, he was a Fulbright Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the National University of Mongolia, where he conducted research on how urban crises, such as ger district redevelopment and chronic air pollution in Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar, contribute to a pervasively felt deficit of democracy. Time: 2:30 PM Date: 8 July 2026 (Wed) Venue: Room 201, Leung Kau Kui Building,CUHK Co-organisers:Centre for Cultural Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Enquiry: cuccs@cuhk.edu.hk