The founding of the Institute for European Thought and Culture in 2007 is an important step taken by the School of Humanities in the early stage to establish its disciplinary framework. It is aimed at building a platform for the study of European thought and culture surrounding its leading discipline (German and French philosophy). Based on the tradition of Tongji University’s exchange with Europe, it combines researches on relevant fields including European literature and culture within the Institute and the University. This step then was groundbreaking in China. During the 13^th Five-Year Plan period, the director of the Institute was Professor Sun Zhouxing, the first “Yang Tze Scholar” of humanities of Tongji University.

In 2017, China started the “Double First-Class” initiative. In the meantime, the “national innovative development and European studies” was set out as a first-class interdisciplinary course, and Professor Sun Zhouxing was in charge of the sub-project “European Thought and Culture and Exchanges and Mutual Learning between China and Europe.” In this sub-project, the Institute for European Thought and Culture undertook the main scientific research and management tasks with a cross-disciplinary, cross-school and cross-cultural talent team of about 30 members including backbone teachers of philosophy, Chinese, art theory and German, 3 foreign teachers and 3 part-time foreign professors.

During the 13^th Five-Year Plan period, the team of the Institute of European Thought and Culture overfulfilled its construction goals with achievements in relevant directions supported by the sub-project of the first-class interdisciplinary course as follows: 2 scientific research achievement awards and 3 teaching achievement awards above provincial and ministerial level, 3 important national social science projects and 1 important project of the Publicity Department of the CPC, 22 projects of above provincial and ministerial level approved (among which are 9 national projects), 122 papers published (among which 31 are included in Class A journals), and 51 works of various types (including 3 German works).

Moreover, the team has been promoting long-term projects including European Thought and Culture Series by Tongji University (over 60 published books), Chinese Thought and Culture Series by Tongji University (over 10 published books), The Martin Heidegger Collection (30 volumes), The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (14 volumes), and cooperative projects with China’s famous academic press “The Commercial Press” such as Future Art Series (8 published books), Future Philosophy Series (6 published books), and Future Liberal Arts Series (3 published books). This has found positive echo domestically and European studies at Tongji has become a well-established brand.