Urban Mediations: International Conference on the Narratives, Ecologies, and Poetics of the City (Hong Kong, 5-6 December 2024)

City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, 5 December 2024

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sha Tin, 6 December 2024

This international, interdisciplinary conference aims to uncover emergent frameworks and methods for the interpretation and analysis of literary, filmic, and cultural texts relating to the profound transformation of cities around the world across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Our starting point for discussion is cities in Asia and their dialogues with different cities in the world. While “urban” typically denotes a geographical location and its inhabitants, we use it to indicate a process and practice of co-existence. The urban, in this sense, is informed by socio-cultural, economic, ecological, political, and technological processes that may appear or aspire to be global but that are, in fact, diversely lived and experienced.

The framework “urban mediations” offers a way of thinking about “the urban” not as a bounded, stable object, but as an intermediary agency that is both specific to a particular milieu and connected to people and processes elsewhere. “Mediation” extends recent work on urban infrastructure – the physical systems of connectivity that keep cities moving – to include the social, affective, aesthetic, and material relations that bind the urban to itself and to myriad elsewheres. For Lauren Berlant (2022: 22), infrastructure “is another way of talking about mediation—but always as a material process of binding, never merely as a material technology, aesthetic genre, form, or norm that achieves something.” Like the urban, mediation “is not a stable thing but a way of seeing the unstable relations among dynamically related things.”

Asia is a rich, highly diverse region that can be used as a focal point for exploring the uneven, often unpredictable mediations that constitute urban life. Many of the cities in the region emerged, or were shaped by, what Lasse Heerten (2021:351) describes as the “first globalisation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries…the heyday of colonial Empire and steam technologies.” The enhanced interconnectivity, especially since the nineteenth century, has contributed to the circulation of things, objects, ideas, and, for Su Lin Lewis (2016:140), the formation of the “cosmopolitan publics” and “print-worlds,” which often intersect with those that exist in cities and regions in different parts of the world in both physical and symbolic terms. The contradictions, tension, and the co-existence of opportunities and challenges in cities have become sources of inspiration for writers and artists across the world and historical periods to represent, reveal, and respond to different topical issues and conflicts.

Scholarship on Asian cities tends to be framed within a discourse of economic development. On the one hand, studies have highlighted how cities in the region have been and will become key drivers of economic growth in our urban future, with Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Seoul and Singapore as long-standing economic hubs and emerging cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Jakarta, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi as sites of more recent investment and development. On the other hand, many of these same cities are challenged by issues of overdevelopment, such as congestion, pollution, overcapacity, hyperinflation, extreme weather, aging populations, and shifting demographics.

Other scholars, such as Abdoulmaliq Simone (2004, 2010, 2022), Asef Bayat (2000,2013), Ravi Sundaram (2009), and Ara Wilson (2016), have written about how informality in urban environments affords agency to urban residents who are dispossessed of resources and livelihoods because of poverty or displacement. Divested of access to suitable infrastructures because of government corruption or ineptness, residents, across different historical and social contexts, have explored ways to improvise, poach, or hack obsolete or damaged technologies by collaborating with each other. These creative practices of inhabiting the city have been echoed in the work of writers, filmmakers, architects, and artists who have experimented with new forms of collaboration, aesthetics, and community within and across cities for the past two centuries.

As such, issues relating to urban environments, in Asia and elsewhere, are not simply issues of policy planning and resource management but require new ideas from the arts and humanities to comprehend the epistemological, cultural, and ecological impact of rapid urban changes. We hope that by exchanging thoughts and asking questions together we can develop new critical and creative frameworks that engage with different historical moments, address the challenges facing our urban futures, and shed light on the possibilities and practices that exist within the present.

Interdisciplinary in focus, our conference invites participants from both the humanities and social sciences working with texts and practices across historical periods and cultural contexts, from a diversity of disciplines and subfields including literature, film and media studies, architecture, geography, urban studies, gender studies, and anthropology. Participants interested in exploring intersections with gender, race, indigeneity; migration and the circulation of things, cultural texts, ideas, people, information; climate, ecology, and the nonhuman; and Asian urban practices and poetics are especially welcome.

We are looking for papers that address the following questions:

• How might literary works, film, architecture, and other poetic practices mediate, negotiate, or interrogate urban relations and the built environment?
• How can creative and critical practices reveal, mediate, or challenge various forms of inequalities and respond to questions surrounding gender, race, religion, class, labour, and humans’ relationship with animals and nature?
• How can microhistories of cities, municipalities, districts, and neighborhoods offer a more nuanced view of specific milieux or challenge grand narratives of development and globalisation?
• In what ways do cities narrate themselves? What stories can be read in the topography, design, and composition of their built environments?
• How do imagination and memory shape and mediate the urban experience, or re-create the materiality of the cityscape?
• How have colonialism’s cultural and historical legacies shaped the urban form and the environmental conditions of cities?
• How might “archipelagic thinking” reconfigure how we imagine urban regions characterised by city clusters or interconnected metropolitan centres?
• How do imaginaries of failed or fragile infrastructures reveal fissures in a world system built on the uninterrupted flow of capital, bodies, and goods?
• How might an expanded understanding of infrastructure – not simply as a physical system of connectivity and flow but as the affective, aesthetic, and material relations that bind together social life – enable new conceptualisations of the urban?
• How might feminist and queer literatures, films, and artistic works challenge the masculinist and heteronormative assumptions inherent in dominant frameworks of migration, economic development, and the urban?
• How might we rethink our participation in the technological assemblages that comprise urban life and that mediate our access to the city, to other inhabitants, and to places elsewhere?

Kindly send a proposal with a 400-500-word abstract and a one-page CV to urbanmediations24@gmail.com by 15 May 2024. As the goal is to produce an edited volume, accepted papers are expected to represent new, unpublished work.

The final session on day 2 will involve 3 parallel workshops to be led by discussants on emergent topics about urban mediations open to early career scholars.

An optional walking tour of sites in Hong Kong will be organized on 7 December. Please check the conference website (https://urbannarrativesnetwork.com/urban-mediations-2024/) for updates on the workshops and the walking tour.

This conference is co-organized by City University of Hong Kong, Department of English; The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Research Institute for the Humanities, Centre for Cultural Studies & MA in Intercultural Studies Programme, Departments of English and Cultural and Religious Studies; University of Hong Kong, Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures in the Department of Comparative Literature.

Conference convenors:

Elmo Gonzaga (CUHK)

Klaudia Lee (CityU)

Joanna Mansbridge (CUHK)

Alvin K. Wong (HKU)

RIH cordially invites research postgraduate (RPg)  students in the Faculty of Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong to apply for sponsorship for HEYTA 2024 forum (Higher Education Young Talent Alliance 2024).

HEYTA 2024 will be held from 3 – 5 September 2024, at the University of Exeter, UK. It aims to enhance academic exchanges among young humanities students from universities in China and the UK and cultivate their future-oriented global competencies, as well as their capabilities for cross-cultural exchange and cooperation. RIH will sponsor a number of RPg students from the Faculty of Arts at CUHK to attend the forum.

Themes of the 2024 Forum

1. Interconnectivity and Interculturality (互联性与跨文化性)
2. AI, Technology and the Post-Knowledge World (人工智能、科学技术与后知识时代 )
3. Sustainable Development Goals (可持续发展目标)

This scholarship will provide travel support (registration, flights, and accommodation) to the awardees to attend the HEYTA 2024.

Eligibility:

• CUHK Faculty of Arts MPhil & PhD student
• Fluent in English, capable of using English for presentations and discussions
• Submit a post-event report highlighting the significance you have gained from the forum.

Registration link: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13685182  
Application closing date: 31 March 2024

For inquiries, please send an email to rihs@cuhk.edu.hk or contact the RIH office at 3943 4786

About the UK-China Higher Education Humanities Alliance (UKCHA) and HEYTA

The UK-China Higher Education Humanities Alliance (UKCHA) was initiated by Tsinghua University and established in Shanghai in December 2016. It is committed to promoting cooperation and development in research and education in the humanities field between Chinese and British universities. So far, it has grown to 17 alliance member universities, including Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Wuhan University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shanghai International Studies University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, University of Exeter, King’s College London, Loughborough University, Needham Research Institute – University of Cambridge, School of Oriental and African Studies – University of London, University College London, University of Manchester, Oxford University China Center, University of Reading and University of Warwick.

Since its establishment in 2016, the Alliance has organized numerous academic conferences and exchange activities, making positive contributions to promoting academic exchanges and cooperation between China and the UK. To further expand academic discussions, exchanges, and cooperation among student groups, the Alliance has been hosting the Youth Student Forum Exchange (HEYTA) since 2019, aiming to explore opportunities for students to engage in dialogues between Chinese and British humanities and social sciences.

In April 2019, the first HEYTA event was successfully held at Tsinghua University. Representatives conducted a series of visits, lectures, and seminars to discuss the protection and development of the humanities. From 2020 to 2022, the University of Exeter and Tsinghua University organized three successful online events. In 2023, the event returned to an offline format, facilitating valuable dialogues among young individuals from both countries. The specific activities were as follows:

• 2019 – hosted by Tsinghua University (Beijing): Exploring Beauty in Humanities and Innovation, Bridging the Communication between China and the UK.
• 2020 – hosted by the University of Exeter (online): Digital Humanities and Special Collections, Intercultural Communications, Theatre and Performance, and International Cultural Exchange.
• 2021 – hosted by Tsinghua University (online): Digital Humanities, Studies of Eastern and Western Plays, and Comparative Literature.
• 2022 – hosted by the University of Exeter (online): Rewriting Modernities: Literature, Historiography And Translating Cultures.
• 2023 – hosted by Tsinghua University (Beijing): Exploring the History, Recounting the Blending of Civilizations.

About the themes of HEYTA 2024

 1. Interconnectivity and Interculturality
Interculturality includes dynamic and evolving relationships between groups that include exchange and dialogue – with an acknowledgment that the purpose of interculturality is transformed relationships that work towards a just, equal, and plural society. This involves significant challenges. Intercultural competence is increasingly emphasised as a critical skill, and it is now part of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test. Embracing interculturality is more than just coexistence; it is about promoting mutual respect, understanding and appreciation of different cultures and traditions. This theme encourages embracing rich cultural diversity. In today’s interconnected world, it is crucial to equip individuals with intercultural competence so that they can navigate the complexities of multicultural interactions with sensitivity and openness. Interconnectivity refers to the complex network of links between elements like people, cultures, economies, and technologies, where they mutually influence one another. This interdependence surpasses geographical and cultural limits, underscoring the interconnected nature of our global society. It forms the basis for understanding the intricate web of connections in our increasingly globalized world. Together, these concepts encourage a global perspective that values cultural diversity and promotes collaboration and understanding among people from different parts of the world.

2. AI, Technology, and the Post-Knowledge World
In today’s era of rapid technological advancement, the traditional methods of knowledge dissemination, acquisition, and verification are undergoing profound changes. The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and automation not only enhances human capabilities but also reshapes the fundamental nature of the creation, dissemination, and application of knowledge. Therefore, we need to conduct interdisciplinary exploration, deeply explore the intricate ethical dilemmas brought by artificial intelligence, think about the democratization of knowledge promoted by digital platforms, and examine the dynamic evolution between humans and machines and other urgent issues that need to be resolved.

3. Sustainable Development Goals
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and social inequalities must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health, wellbeing and education, and further social justice aims – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. SDGs span across humanities, social and natural sciences and weaken the boundaries between disciplines thus encouraging interdisciplinary work. They also offer opportunities for critical debates about the priorities they set and their underlying ideas. This is especially when SDGs are explored from a perspective that challenges western-centred thinking and values and embraces wider views about the ways we understand the interplay between local and global challenges. Possible topics include inclusion; gender equality; social justice; sustainable development; wellbeing; climate change; peace; the relationship between local and global; and (alternative) globalisation.

RIH announces 3 shortlisted proposals of the 3-D Printed Museum Competition

The Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) has announced the three shortlisted proposals for the first edition of the 3-D Printed Museum Competition. This competition aims to explore the creativity of students utilizing cutting-edge 3-D technologies for humanities scholarship.

The three shortlisted teams will receive one-on-one 3-D printing training workshops at the University Library’s MakerSpace. Their 3-D printed pieces will be displayed at the University Library and will compete for the grand prize. As part of the award, each team will participate in the Day of Digital Humanities on 20 May 2024, to give a short presentation about their work.

The three proposals were selected by a panel composed of representatives from the RIH and the University Library. The selection was based on criteria such as the use of 3-D printed and scanned technologies, creativity, relevance of the theme, scalability potential, and feasibility, among others.

The shortlisted proposals are:

Neon Cfu, by HUANG Xiadong, Cory (Year 1, PhD in History), HO Wing Yin, Winnie (Year 2, MPhil in History) and LIU Jiayan, Laurie (Year 2, PhD in History)

Epoch Chronicles, by TICAO, Mar Lorence Gamboa (Year 1, History) and WANG Shu (Year 1, History)

Sign of the City: Neon and Calligraphy Signboards in Hong Kong, by WONG Kam Pang (Year 2, PhD in Chinese Language and Literature), LAM Pung Pan (Year 2, MPhil in Chinese Language and Literature) and TSOI Ching Ching (Year 1, MPhil in Chinese Language and Literature)

The 3-D Printed Museum Competition is one of RIH’s Digital Humanities Initiatives aimed at fostering innovation in humanities studies. The winners of the competition will be announced on the Day of Digital Humanities, which will take place on 20 May 2024, at the University Library.

Congratulations to the shortlisted teams and thank you to everyone who applied.

The Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) and the University Library invite proposals from the Faculty of Arts student community to form teams to participate in a 3D Printed Museum Competition.

3D Printed Museum Competition

1. Competition theme: Recreating Hong Kong in the 1960s & 1970s
2. This competition is open to CUHK Faculty of Arts undergraduate and postgraduate students only.
3. Each team should have between two and three members.
4. Knowledge of 3D printing and modeling is not required. A technical workshop will be provided to the shortlisted contestants.
5. Each shortlisted team will be given $1,000 worth of 3D printing credits to produce their exhibits in the University Library’s MakerSpace.
6. Each team must present five 3D printed objects related to the competition theme; at least two objects should be reproduced on the basis of 3D scanning.
7. Exhibits may be displayed in the University Library following the competition.
8. Prize: The winning team will receive $1,500 book vouchers, while the remaining shortlisted teams will receive $500 book vouchers each.
9. Call for proposal deadline: 31 January 2024 (extended)

Interested Faculty of Arts students should submit a proposal using this template.

Presentations download
3D Printing & Humanities by Prof. Stuart McManus (Dept. History),  Associate Director, RIH

3D Modeling and Printing by Ms. Carol Kong, Learning Services Librarian

Completed proposals should be sent to rihs@cuhk.edu.hk by 31 January 2024. Please send inquiries to the same email address as well.

First-round results will be announced on 5 February 2024.

To facilitate the Faculty of Arts’ postgraduates in meeting the challenges of tomorrow, RIH’s Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Reading Group Initiatives encourage students to cross knowledge boundaries, aspire to become competent, versatile, and creative scholars.

Congratulations to the 9 selected Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Reading Groups!

1. Analysis of Social Life and Local Community in Linxiang County during the Eastern Han Period: A Reading Group on the Wuyi Square Manuscripts五一廣場簡牘
2. The CUHK Hong Kong Studies in Arts and Culture Reading Group
3. Neuro-mapping China: History, Culture, Translation and Digital Humanities
4. Interdisciplinary Study of Chinese Philosophy and Religion: Theory and Practice
5. CUHK Philippine Studies Interdisciplinary Research Group
6. Phase Boundaries: In-between the Creative and Empirical
7. Philosophy of Language Reading Group
8. Interdisciplinary Ethnography Reading Group
9. 東（南）亞世界的文學、語言

Stay tuned to RIH’s Facebook and Instagram for the latest activities of our Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Reading Groups!

A RIH-funded Interdisciplinary Research Project

This initiative provides an interdisciplinary platform for humanities scholars working in different fields, locations, and periods to examine the interconnected cultures and aesthetics of understudied cities in Asia and elsewhere. It also aims to cultivate networks between urban humanities scholars at CUHK with other universities in Hong Kong and overseas.

Hyperlink to the project website

Project team

1. Elmo GONZAGA, Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
2. Joana MANSBRIDGE, Associate Professor, English (Theater Studies), The Chinese University of Hong Kong
3. Collier NOGUES, Assistant Professor, English (Creative Writing), The Chinese University of Hong Kong
4. Klaudia H.Y. LEE, Acting Head, English, City University of Hong Kong (19th and 20th Century Anglophone Literature)
5. Alvin K. WONG, Director, Centre for Globalization and Culture, Comparative Literature,  The University of Hong Kong (Sinophone Media Studies)

Project objectives

• To provide an interdisciplinary platform for humanities scholars working on different fields, locations, and periods to examine the interconnected cultures and aesthetics of understudied cities in Asia and elsewhere.
• To cultivate networks between urban humanities scholars at CUHK with other universities in Hong Kong and overseas.
• To organize an international workshop featuring speakers from different disciplines including Literature, Film and Media Studies, Urban Anthropology, Cultural Geography, and Art and Architecture History.
• To produce an edited volume comprising papers developed for the workshop.

Project brief description

Policy institutes and consultancy firms such as AT Kearney and the Economist Intelligence Unit have highlighted how rapidly expanding cities in Asia are becoming the key drivers of the global economy. Recent initiatives in the Urban Humanities have tended to center on the disciplines of Geography and Architecture in North America and Western Europe. This working group aims to provide a platform for interdisciplinary research that will examine the changing cultures and aesthetics of metropolitan areas and city clusters across Asia and around the world by drawing on the concepts and methods of the arts and humanities in relation to other fields.

This working group will build on recent interdisciplinary and cross-institutional initiatives in Urban Humanities. HKU has its own Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities Initiative, which has been in existence since 2012. The newly established Urban Humanities Network, which comprises Harvard University, Princeton University, UC Berkeley, University of Arizona, Washington University-St. Louis, and UCLA, held its inaugural conference in March 2023. The similarly new Communicative Cities Research Network, involving a partnership between Fudan University and the National University of Singapore, will stage its inaugural conference at Yonsei University in October 2023. Convened by interdisciplinary humanities scholars in CUHK and CityU, together with collaborators in HKU and HKBU, this initiative in Transnational Urban Humanities has great potential to expand its network to encompass scholars based in different universities and cities around the world.

This cross-institutional, collaborative Transnational Urban Humanities initiative will draw on concepts and methods from interdisciplinary works in Literature, Film and Media Studies, Urban Anthropology, Cultural Geography, and Art and Architecture History. Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (1974; Wiley-Blackwell, 1992) is seminal in various fields for theorizing the connections among spatial ideologies, practices, and imaginaries. Nezar AlSayyad’s Cinematic Urbanism (Routledge, 2006), Yomi Braester’s Painting the City Red (Duke, 2010), and Gyan Prakash’ Noir Urbanisms (Princeton, 2010) explore how film imaginaries shape the visions and blueprints of urban planners and designers. Jini Kim Watson’s The New Asian City (Minnesota, 2011) analyzes how novels and poems capture the effects of global capitalism and national development on the residents of the capitals of Asian Tiger Economies. Lastly, Setha Low’s On the Plaza (Texas, 2000), AbdouMaliq Simone’s For the City Yet to Come (Duke, 2004), and Aihwa Ong’s Neoliberalism as Exception (Duke, 2006) are pioneering ethnographies of how processes of development and neoliberalism are experienced and negotiated in distinct ways by urban residents through their own frameworks and languages.

Informed by these interdisciplinary works, the RIH-funded Transnational Urban Humanities working group aims to explore the following key questions:
• How can interdisciplinary concepts and methods from Literature, Film and Media Studies, Urban Anthropology, Cultural Geography, and Art and Architecture History be used to examine the cultures and aesthetics of understudied cities?
• How do the production, circulation, consumption, and reproduction of cultural representations and artistic expressions shape the imagination, design, and construction of urban environments?
• How might the dynamic, changing cultures and aesthetics of cities shape their residents’ identity, aspiration, agency, and community?

CALL FOR PAPERS: Urban Mediations: International Conference on the Narratives, Ecologies, and Poetics of the City (Hong Kong, 5-6 December 2024) Deadline: 15 May 2024 For more information, please click here.

A RIH-funded Interdisciplinary Research Project

This initiative facilitates dialogue and knowledge exchange on a wide range of topics related to the human past. Researchers can share the latest developments in their respective fields through themed technical workshops and focus group meetings. Ultimately, this initiative will help advance the study of the human past by strengthening the collaborative network to address research interests more effectively.

Hyperlink to the project website

Project team

• Christina CHEUNG (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, CUHK)
• Dr. Reijiro AOYAMA (Senior Lecturer, Department of Japanese Studies, CUHK)
• Prof. David Michael BAKER (Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences, HKU)
• Mr. Alexander CHEUNG (Registered Professional Archaeologist)
• Prof. Jed KAPLAN (Associate Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, HKU)
• Mr. Udo KRENZER (Regional Forensic Manager for Asia and the Pacific, International Committee of the Red Cross)
• Prof. LAM Weng Cheong (Associate Professor, Department of History/Anthropology, CUHK)
• Mr. WANG Wenjian (Licensed Archaeologist)
• Prof. PENG Peng (Assistant Professor, Cultural Management, CUHK)
• Prof. Benoit THIBODEAU (Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences, CUHK)
• Prof. Wicky TSE Wai Kit (Associate Professor, Department of History, CUHK)
• Prof. Leilah VEVAINA (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, CUHK)
• Prof. ZHANG Chaoxiong (Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, CUHK)

Project objectives

• To promote intra- and inter- faculty collaborations in CUHK, presenting new opportunities to enhance the research portfolio and impact of the Faculty of Arts.
• To promote the fields of Archaeology and Archaeological Science in Hong Kong.
• To initiate the first focus workgroup on CUHK campus that bridges the Arts (Anthropology/History) with the Sciences (Life Sciences/Material Sciences).
• To connect researchers who share similar research interests in the human past but possess different relevant skills.
• To provide a supportive platform where larger transdisciplinary projects can emerge.

Project brief description

The field of archaeology has undergone tremendous change in recent years. Particularly, advances in scientific methods and an increasing institutional push for interdisciplinarity have enabled and encouraged archaeologists to explore new ways to reconstruct the past. These state-of-the-art technologies have revolutionised the way we learn about the past, opening up areas of human history previously inaccessible using conventional methods. We can now take our investigations to an entirely new level of detail and accuracy, from intimate details such as the eye and hair colour of someone who lived thousands of years ago , to global concerns such as past climatic events , . Recent research demonstrates the successful use of scientific methods in addressing social issues such as social stratification, gender dynamics, trading networks, and cultural changes in past societies , , . Moreover, in addition to learning about how our ancestors lived, archaeology also has direct and indirect relevance for current issues. For example, by looking at recovery patterns of past populations from various crises (e.g. climate change , epidemics , or wars and forced displacements ), we can provide valuable information to help inform decision making on how best to implement polices relating to emergencies in modern times. Furthermore, archaeological methods may also find utility in other related fields, including but not limited to forensic recovery of human remains , wildlife trafficking , and biodiversity studies . Therefore, there is both the need and urgency to continue developing archaeological sciences. Consistently ranked as one of the world’s best research institutes, CUHK would be the perfect host to lead such an innovative initiative in Asia.

Despite having proved to be immensely successful in many other countries, the implementation of scientific methods in archaeological research is still not routinely practiced in Hong Kong. Fortunately, researchers with related expertise and interests, as well as required equipment and analytical facilities can be found across universities in Hong Kong. Hence, this initiative intends to bring together a team of researchers and practitioners with shared interests in using or developing scientific methods in archaeology, providing an arena for us to share and exchange ideas, experiences, and findings. This first (to hopefully more) initative will focus on two themes, bioarchaeology (i.e. health, diet, and mobility) and material science (i.e. metal and ceramics).

Instead of all working on one project, this initiative will focus on building synergies between researchers across very different fields. In a round-table setting, researchers will engage in discussions and hands-on demonstrations, providing comments and insights on each other’s research projects based on their respective specialised backgrounds. The goal is to explore new interdisciplinary perspectives that can enhance all of our ongoing projects. We expect this effort will inspire, encourage, and guide all participants to design trans-disciplinary collaborative projects. Last but not least, while the current initiative only focuses on connecting researchers in Hong Kong, it is hoped that the success of this effort will serve as a springboard for larger collaborations with researchers beyond Hong Kong in the near future.

(4 & 8 Mar. 2024, CUHK) A two-day workshop titled “What You Eat: Applications of Biochemical Methods in Archaeology” attracted over 30 participants from various departments across HK, including students and scholars from Anthropology, Biological Sciences, Cultural and Religious Studies, Philosophy, Public Health, and more. After an introduction to the basic principles of the method, participants prepared their own hair for stable isotope analysis and learned to use the program R to plot their data. We then had an exciting discussion on the meaning of the data and how it can help us understand the food practices of a society. The generated data will also be used for a student’s FYP!

A RIH-funded interdisciplinary research project

The aim of this initiative will be in three main areas: research, pedagogy, and public interaction. Research: it will develop research collaboration between interdisciplinary members, and give a venue to present research. Pedagogy: there will be mentoring of PG and UG students interested in South Asia, as well as course development. Public interaction: it will hold public talks and events highlighting South Asian connections in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and East Asia.

Project team

CUHK Faculty of Arts
Leilah Vevaina (ANT)
Venera Khalikova (ANT)
Wyman Tang (ANT)
Stuart McManus (HIS)
Yao Zhihua (PHIL)
Hayden Kee (PHIL)

CUHK Other Faculties
Christopher Roberts (LAW)
Nishant Shah (COM)

CUHK RPG Students
LI Xing (Program Coordinator)
Amy Phua
Varsha Upraity
Ina Goel

Non-CUHK
Alastair McClure (HKU History)
Devika Shankar (HKU History)
Rashna D. Nicholson (HKU English)

Project objectives

The aim of this initiative would be in three main areas:
• Research: form research collaboration between interdisciplinary members; venue to present research
• Pedagogy: mentoring of PG and UG students interested in South Asia; course development
• public interaction: public talks and events highlighting South Asia connections in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and East Asia

If this initiative were successful, it could lead to:
• funding 2024-5 and beyond
• a Collaborative Research Grant
• Faculty of Arts collaborative teaching
• RGC Inter-University funding
• Further recruitment of UG and PG students from South Asia/working on South Asia

Project brief description

While CUHK and particularly the Faculty of Arts excels in the study of Hong Kong, Mainland China, and East Asia more broadly, several faculty members and RPG students have research expertise in South Asia or South Asian diasporas and cultures within East Asia. Instead of focusing this Initiative on research on South Asia, firmly within a kind of area-studies paradigm, it seeks to think across broad regional worlds and fixed disciplinary foci to emphasizing the complex connections across entrenched, imaginary geographies produced by area studies paradigms and geo-political realities. The Initiative seeks to build on the strengths of our current faculty research and reach forward to think through Asian connections from the perspective of Hong Kong, rather than the West, that is, research and connections on South Asia from Asia.

In terms of research, the Initiative would be a venue for faculty members to present work and foster collaboration within and beyond CUHK. These collaboration could lead to individual papers, workshops, collaborative research grants, new course proposals, and even RGC Inter-university funding. Its pedagogical aim is to foster strong mentoring relations between students and faculty members, in particular, RPG students working on these connections. With its web presence, the Initiative also hopes to aid as a recruitment tool for prospective students from South Asia and those who wish to study these connections within the Faculty of Arts. In terms of public interaction, the group hopes to highlight the historical and continuing ties between South Asian diasporas and culture, and Hong Kong.

(15 Dec. 2023) The Expansion of Halal Certification and the Role of China: Leaders, Followers, and Halal Diplomacy Speaker: Dr. Zaynab El Bernoussi, NYU-Abu Dhabi
(19 Mar. 2024) Surviving the Sanctuary City: Asylum-Seeking Work in Nepali New York  Speaker:  Dr Tina Shrestha, Waseda University

(2 Apr. 2024) Seeking Sisterhood: Travel Writing, Asia, and the Search for Muslim Women’s Solidarity in Colonial India  Speaker: Dr. Daniel Majchrowicz (Northwestern University)

(Upcoming) 15 Apr.2024 An Ayurvedic Pill for COVID-19: Media Discourse on Alternative Treatments during the Pandemic in India Speaker: Dr. Venera R. Khalikova, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, CUHK

A South Asia from Asia Interdisciplinary Initiatives event

In this talk, Dr. Khalikova presents the findings of a joint research project that examined India’s media discourse on Coronil- a contentious drug launched as an ayurvedic treatment for COVID-19. The examination of four national English-language newspapers in India shows the lack of depth and critical analysis in the reporting on Coronil, which as considerable socioeconomic and public health implications. Some members of the government, judiciary, and media adopted the rhetoric of populist medical pluralism, embedded in the Hindu nationalist discourse justifying the endorsement of Coronil in terms of the neoliberal economy of ‘choices’ of the Indian people and their ‘need’ for homegrown treatments, thus shifting the blame for the health crisis from the state to the citizens. The green light given to Coronil confounded the government’s scientific communication during the pandemic leading to confusing messaging about the cause and treatments of COVID-19.

Speaker: Dr. Venera R. Khalikova, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, CUHK
Date: 15 April 2024 (Mon)
Time: 2:00 -4:00 pm
Venue: Leung Kau Kui Building LG7, CUHK

Please click here to register: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/webform/view.php?id=13686265 

About the speaker

Dr. Venera R. Khalikova is a cultural anthropologist who studies how people’s sense of belonging influences their decisions about health, work, and migration. Focusing on doctors on alternative medicine in India and Indian highly skilled migrants in Hong Kong, Khalikova examines the role of citizenship, religion, gender, class and ethnoracial affiliation in people’s everyday acts and practices.

A  South Asia from Asia Interdisciplinary Initiatives event was held on 19th March, featuring Dr. Tina Shrestha discussing her new monograph, titled “Surviving the Sanctuary City: Asylum-Seeking Work in Nepali New York” Dr. Shrestha, an academic author and ethnographer affiliated with Waseda University, explored the production of migrant labor and suffering through asylum enforcement in her book. Additionally, she delved into the cultural logic of suffering and provided a fresh perspective on this form of precarious labor. It’s worth noting that her book received an honorable mention for the 2023 Shelley Fisher Fishkin Book Prize.

Speaker:  Dr. Tina Shrestha (Waseda University)

Date: Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Time: 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Venue: Leung Kau Kui Building, LG7, CUHK

A two-day workshop titled “What You Eat: Applications of Biochemical Methods in Archaeology”, organized by the Archaeological Science in HK interdisciplinary initiative, was held on the 4th and 8th of March 2024 at CUHK. The workshop attracted over 30 participants from various departments across HK, including students and scholars from Anthropology, Biological Sciences, Cultural and Religious Studies, Philosophy, Public Health, and more. After an introduction to the basic principles of the method, participants prepared their own hair for stable isotope analysis and learned to use the program R to plot their data. We then had an exciting discussion on the meaning of the data and how it can help us understand the food practices of a society. The generated data will also be used for a student’s FYP!

Date: 26 February 2024 (Monday)
Time: 5 pm (HKT)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Prof. Chen Jing陈静
Associate Professor
School of Arts, Nanjing University

About the talk:
This lecture aims to re-examine the concept of ‘heritage’ from the perspective of digital humanities. The speaker will present several digital humanities projects conducted by their team over the past few years as case studies. These projects include cross-disciplinary research on Chinese traditional color, image analysis of artificial objects using computer vision algorithms, and digital curation based on metadata. Through these examples, the lecture will illustrate how digital technology, from digitization to visual knowledge production (referred to as ‘graphesis’ by Johanna Drucker), has reshaped our understanding and epistemology of heritage.

About the speaker:
Prof. Chen Jing 陈静 is an Associate Professor at the School of Arts, Nanjing University, and a founding member of the Innovation Center for Digital Humanities Research at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Social Science and Humanities, Nanjing University. Her current research interests lie in Digital Art and Digital Humanities, with a particular focus on visual knowledge production using digital technology. She has published essays in both Chinese and English and curated exhibitions featuring painting, VR artworks, and Generative Art.

We wanted to inform you that the announcement of our upcoming event, Success on the Job Market: CVs and cover letters – Postgraduate Career Development Workshop, scheduled for 23 Feb 2024 (Fri), has been postponed until further notice.
Thank you for your support and we look forward to sharing the exciting news about this event with you soon.

Success on the job market: CVs and cover letters

Do you plan on applying for academic jobs? Want to know more about how to write an effective cover letter and CV?

Cover letters and CVs are the first things hiring committees review and the most important part of a job application. Join us for this 90-minute session, during which Profs. Benny Lim and Xuenan Cao, from the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, share their tips and strategies on how to write effective cover letters and CVs. The session will consist of a 60-minute sharing session by Profs. Lim and Cao, followed by a 30-minute Q and A. All are welcome!

Date: 23 February 2024 (Friday)
Time: 4:30 – 6:00 pm
Venue: ELB LT4 (UG/F)

Click here to register.

Date: 19 February 2024 (Monday)
Time: 4:00 – 5:30 pm (HKT)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Prof. Paul Arthur
Chair in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences,
Edith Cowan University, Western Australia

About the talk:
Open scholarship, or unrestricted access to scholarly research and resources, is a topic of significant public, policy, and government concern, as illustrated by numerous national and international statements. Over the past two decades, opportunities have emerged to expand open scholarship and reshape the longstanding tradition of publishing research in closed formats, encouraging more accessible, participatory, interactive, ethical, and transparent approaches, that reach far broader and more diverse publics. This talk addresses the need for fundamental research to underpin and guide strategic transformation of national and international open scholarship policies into practice for the humanities.

About the speaker:
Paul Arthur is Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow and Chair in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. He speaks and publishes on major challenges and changes facing 21st-century society, from the global impacts of technology on communication, culture and identity to migration and human rights.

Success on the job market: Interviews and teaching demonstrations

Date: 2 February 2024 (Friday)
Time: 4:30 – 6:00 pm
Venue: YIA LT4 (2/F)
Eligibility: CUHK postgraduate students
Reserve a spot 

‘Do you plan on applying for academic jobs? Want to know more about how to perform well in interviews and teaching demonstrations?’

If a hiring committee has shortlisted you for a job, you may be invited to an interview and, possibly, to give a teaching demonstration. Join us for this 90-minute session during which two of our young assistant professors in the early stages of their careers, Prof. Chen Jizhou Jannis, and Prof. Sheng Yihui from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, will share their strategies and tips on how to prepare for a successful job interview and teaching demonstration. The session will consist of a 60-minute sharing session by Profs. Chen and Sheng, followed by a 30-minute Q&A.

All are welcome!

Speaker: Prof. Neil Murphy, Department of English, CUHK

Date: 31 January 2024 (Wed)
Time: 4:30 – 6:00 pm
Venue: CYT LT5, 3/F Cheng Yu Tung Building, CUHK (University Station exit B)

Please click here to reserve your seat.

About the lecture:

In this interdisciplinary talk, Prof Murphy will discuss the impact of the “pictorial turn” identified by W. J. T Mitchell in the 20th century. It analyses how selected contemporary novels have responded to a proliferation of images in modern society and demonstrates how they incorporate visual encounters in their narratives, exemplifying a deep intermedial integration of word and image. This analysis argues that the porous form of the novel has proven to be an eminently suitable place of cohabitation with the visual arts, demonstrated most vividly in its innovative use of ekphrasis.

Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. University of Chicago Press, 1994: 3.

M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands (1948)

About the speaker:

Neil Murphy is a Professor of English at CUHK. He is the editor of Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form (Dalkey Archive Press, 2010), and has co-edited (with Keith Hopper) The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013) and a four-book series on the Irish writer, Dermot Healy. His monograph, John Banville (2018), was published by Bucknell University Press (new edition to be re-issued in 2024), and he has co-edited (with W. Michelle Wang and Cheryl Julia Lee), the Routledge Companion to Literature and Art (2024). Forthcoming in 2024 is his co-edited (with Derek Hand and Kathleen Costello-Sullivan) Companion to Contemporary Irish Literature (Syracuse Uni. Press), and a monograph on Contemporary Fiction and Art (2025).

Date: 15 January 2024 (Mon)
Time: 5 pm (HKT)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Prof. LI Bin
School of Chinese Language and Literature,
Nanjing Normal University

About the talk:

Artificial intelligence technology has rapidly changed the study form of humanities. In this presentation, we will discuss the key issues in using natural language processing, deep learning, GIS, database and visualization technologies to design a new digital humanities database from the electronic texts of ancient books. We will introduce automatic tagging tools for ancient Chinese sentence/word segmentation, named entity tagging. Then, we will present a case study of constructing the DH database of Chinese classics Zuozhuan(左傳), Shiji(史記) and Zizhitongjian(資治通鑒), which offers word based multi-functional retrieval in addition to the full-text retrieval. Data analysis and visualization also reveal new facts from the texts, such as the personal social relations and travelling distance. Finally, we discuss the potential improvements and applications of the DH database.

About the speaker:

Prof. LI Bin is a professor at the School of Chinese Language and Literature at Nanjing Normal University, and head of the Center of Language Big Data and Computational Humanities. He teaches Chinese information processing, syntax, data structures, mathematical logic, artificial intelligence, digital humanities and database applications. He earned Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the School of Chinese Language and Literature at Nanjing Normal University. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at Nanjing University from 2010 to 2013, a visiting scholar at the Computer Science Department at Brandeis University in the United States in 2015, and a visiting scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University in 2019. His research interests include lexical analysis, cognitive semantic computing, corpus technology, ancient languages and digital humanities. He has published three books and over 70 papers.

Digital Humanities Initiative

Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School Scholarship
12 -16 August 2024

Eligibility:

• CUHK Faculty of Arts Undergraduate (senior years) / Postgraduate Students
• Attended at least ONE Digital Scholarship and Research Data Workshop organized by the University Library
  

This scholarship will provide travel support (registration, flights and accommodation) to the awardee to attend the Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School 2024. The selection process will require students to propose a digital humanities project for completion upon their return.

Application Deadline: 1 March, 2024

Apply now online

Read blog post written by the 2023 Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School Scholarship awardee.

For enquiries, please send email to rihs@cuhk.edu.hk or call RIH General Office T: 3943 4786

This talk is hosted by South Asia From Asia Initiative 

All are welcome!

A RIH’s Digital Humanities Seed Grant awarded project

Abstract

This comprehensive study merges the fields of digital humanities, psychology, and translation studies, marking a pioneering interdisciplinary approach. It focuses on the translation of Louis Cha’s renowned Condor Trilogy, specifically A Hero Born: The Legend of the Condor Heroes. The research compares Anna Holmwood’s 2018 professional translation of the first nine chapters with a fan translation from an online forum. The study employs innovative digital humanities methods, including text mining, sentiment analysis, and visualization techniques, moving beyond traditional close reading to a computational distant reading approach. Central to this study is an examination of translators’ behaviors and how different translation types—fan-based and professional—affect character portrayals in literature. By analyzing translations of the same text, the study reveals significant differences in character depiction. These variations are quantitatively assessed using the Big Five personality traits, highlighting that fan translations, influenced by collective perceptions within fan communities, exhibit greater disparities, particularly in main characters. These findings show the distinct approaches and priorities of fan and professional translators, particularly in terms of character interpretation and emotional resonance. The research offers insights into the use of digital humanities tools in translation studies. It demonstrates how computational methods can objectively assess subjective interpretations and delineate the variances between fan and professional translations.

Dr. Lidia Mengyuan ZHOU
Lecturer
Department of Translation
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Biography 
Dr. Lidia Mengyuan ZHOU serves as a Lecturer at the Department of Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Her primary areas of research encompass digital humanities within translation studies, Chinese-Portuguese-English translation/interpreting, and translation technology. She has contributed several articles to international peer-reviewed journals, addressing subjects such as comparative literature, dynamics in Chinese-Portuguese-English indirect translation, and poetry translation. In 2021-2022, she led a research endeavor titled “Image of Contemporary China in Portugal: Reception of Chinese Contemporary Literature (2000-2020)”, funded by the Macau Government. Additionally, she is the Principal Investigator for two digital humanities projects, funded by the CUHK, centered on the English and Portuguese translations of Louis Cha’s literary works.

Speaker: Prof. Giovanna Colombetti, Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy

Date: 8 December 2023 (Friday)
Updated Venue: Institute of Chinese Studies Conference Room (2/F Art Museum East Wing) CUHK
https://cuhk.edu.hk/ics/clrc/english/directions.html 

Time: 4:30 – 6:00 pm

Please click here to reserve your seat.

About the lecture:

Recent debates on the nature of the emotions include what has been called the “situated perspective”. Its proponents criticize the general tendency, in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, to consider emotions only as states, or processes, of a person’s brain or body (a position also known as “individualism”), with little consideration for the role of environment. As a remedy, scholars suggest to regard emotions as scaffolded by the environment, both synchronically and diachronically. In this talk Prof. Colombetti will present this notion of “scaffolded emotions” in detail, explain why she thinks it is valuable, and suggest various ways in which it can be developed further.

About the speaker:

Prof. Giovanna Colombetti is a philosopher with a background in both philosophy and cognitive science. She works primarily on emotion and affectivity from the perspective of so-called ‘4E cognition’ (embodied, embedded, enactive and extended cognition). Since her PhD (Sussex, 2004) Prof. Colombetti has strived to reconceptualize various affective phenomena from a dynamical, embodied-enactive and, more recently, situated perspective. In both her teaching and research she draws quite liberally on phenomenology, analytic philosophy, as well as theoretical and experimental work in psychology and neuroscience. More recently Prof. Colombetti has become interested in the contribution that the social sciences and the field of material culture studies can make to our understanding of affectivity, in particular in the context of philosophical debates on the ‘scaffolded’ and perhaps even ‘extended’ nature of the mind.

Date: 4 December 2023 (Monday)
Time: 12 noon (HKT)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Prof. Rita Lucarelli
Associate Professor of Egyptology
Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Culture
UC Berkeley

About the talk:

Since 2015, the Book of the Dead in 3D Project produces 3D annotated models of ancient Egyptian decorated coffins and sarcophagi, conceived as media of funerary religion and magic. In this lecture it will be discussed how meaningful it is to study a religious text or image through digital annotations on a 3D model of ancient artefacts.

In the second part of this lecture, the application of VR technology to the study of ancient Egyptian coffins and funerary monuments will be discussed as well, through the presentation of the international collaborative project “Return to the Tomb: the re-contextualization of a 26th Dynasty Egyptian sarcophagus at the cemetery of Saqqara in Virtual Reality” (UC Berkely, UC Santa Cruz, Virginia Tech, University of Bonn)

Since 2015, The Book of the Dead in 3D Project produces 3D annotated models of ancient Egyptian coffins and sarcophagi, serving as mediums for funerary religion and magic. This lecture examines the significance of studying religious texts and images using digital annotations on 3D models of ancient artifacts. Additionally, the lecture delves into the application of virtual reality (VR) technology in studying Egyptian coffins and funerary monuments. The collaborative project “Return to the Tomb” by UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, Virginia Tech, and the University of Bonn demonstrates the re-contextualization of a 26th Dynasty Egyptian sarcophagus in Saqqara Cemetery through VR.

About the speaker:

Rita Lucarelli is an Associate Professor of Egyptology in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Culture, and the Class of 1939 Chair of Undergraduate Education. She is the Faculty Curator of Egyptology at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology and a Fellow of the Digital Humanities at UC Berkeley. She is presently working at a project aiming at realizing 3D models of ancient Egyptian coffins, the Book of the Dead in 3D. She is also completing a new monograph on demonology in ancient Egypt entitled Agents of punishment and protection: ancient Egyptian Demonology in the First Millenium BCE.
Rita Lucarelli teaches, lectures and researches Egyptomania and the reception of ancient Egypt in the contemporary world, in particular on the representation of ancient Egypt in Afrofuturism. She also teaches courses of Egyptology, Comparative Religion and Interdisciplinary Writing at San Quentin State Prison through the Mount Tamalpais College (https://www.mttamcollege.org/).

Rita Lucarelli studied at the University of Naples “L’Orientale,” Italy, where she received her MA degree in Classical Languages and Egyptology. She holds her Ph.D. from Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her Ph.D. thesis was published as The Book of the Dead of Gatseshen: Ancient Egyptian Funerary Religion in the 10th Century BC. She worked as a Research Scholar and a Lecturer at the Department of Egyptology of Bonn University, where she was part of the team of the “Book of the Dead Project”.

Speaker: Dr. Judyta Olszewski, University of Hong Kong

Venue: Rm 312, Tsang Shiu Tim Building, United College, CUHK

Date: 22 November 2023

Time: 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm

Registration: Online registration form

Abstract:     

Forensic anthropology, a sub-discipline of biological anthropology, involves the examination of human skeletal remains to assist law enforcement agencies. The average person is accustomed to seeing the forensic sciences in television like Bones and CSI, but the work of forensic specialists is also portrayed in news coverage and online media. It warrants the query: does media provide an accurate representation of the sub- discipline? If not, what does forensic anthropology truly involve?

This lecture will explore the facts and fiction surrounding forensic anthropology, while incorporating personal experiences from other continents like Africa and Europe, to provide a realistic understanding of the discipline and dispel popular myths. The discussion will encompass the historical background of forensic anthropology, its evolution, and its contributions to the field of forensic science, including current methods. This lecture will further examine the portrayal of forensic anthropology in popular culture and discuss the potential impact on public perception and expectations. Common misconceptions and myths will be debunked, and the limitations and challenges faced by forensic anthropologists will be highlighted.  The  future  of  forensic  anthropology  will  be  considered,  with emphasis on emerging trends, interdisciplinary and cross-national collaborations, and ethical considerations.

Bio:

Dr. Judyta Olszewski, a forensic anthropologist trained in Europe and South Africa, will talk about some of her experiences in the field.

Chinese University of Hong Kong, Research Institute for the Humanities 2024-26 Postdoctoral Fellowship

Institute Type:               College/ University

Location:                         Hong Kong, China

Position:                          Postdoctoral Fellow

The Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) invites applications for a number of post-doctoral fellowships in the humanities, working within the Faculty of Arts.

These fellowships will commence 1 August 2024 and end 31 July 2026.

Fellows are expected to work on a major research project, to attend RIH events, and to participate in the intellectual life of the Faculty of Arts. The intent is for postdoctoral fellows to continue their training as researchers and gain additional skills and experience with RIH that will prepare them for their research careers in academia or elsewhere. As postdoctoral fellows, they can primarily dedicate their positions to conducting their own independent research. Additionally, they may assist in teaching classes, collaborate on interdisciplinary research initiatives, or even take on lead responsibility for a new interdisciplinary or digital humanities research project or program, all subject to mutual agreement with the management.

Qualifications: Applicants must have been awarded a Ph.D. no later than 31 July 2024 and not be more than three years beyond receipt of the doctoral degree at the start of their fellowship. The fellowship appointment is non-renewable and cannot be held concurrently with other fellowships or academic positions.

How to apply: The 2024-26 application period opens on 15 November 2023, and the application deadline is 18 February 2024.

Applications will be accepted online through the portal at the CUHK Human Resources Website. The following will be required:

• a cover letter,
• current curriculum vitae,
• a 1,000-word research statement with a clear explanation of the originality and significance of the research project,
• a 25-page writing sample,
• a list of three referees (*We will only request letters from the referees for short-listed candidates*), &
• indication of a preferred mentor within CUHK’s Faculty of Arts in the cover letter (no prior consent from the preferred mentor is required).

Benefits: Salary will be highly competitive, commensurate with qualifications and experience. Fellows will also be eligible for research support for attending conferences and for other scholarly activities. More detailed information will be provided at a later stage in the process.

Potential applicants may direct questions about the search to Ms. Basmah Lok, project coordinator at the RIH, at basmahlok@cuhk.edu.hk.

Date: 13 November 2023 (Mon)
Time: 5 pm (HK time)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Ms. Jing Hu
Research Librarian in the East Asia Department
Berlin State Library

About the talk:

The complex tributary relations between the Qing and Chosŏn dynasties did more than define their political affiliations; they also shaped intricate economic networks. Drawing from the Korean envoys’ travelogues, Yŏnhaengnok, this lecture explores the unofficial trade activities undertaken by Chosŏn interpreters during tribute missions to Qing China. Utilizing digital platforms like MARKUS and DocuSky, the research maps out who these interpreters traded with, what commodities were involved, and the geographic locations of these transactions.

This lecture aims to introduce to the methodology of text mining and historical network analysis. The approach of the example research involves the sophisticated use of entity extraction, ontology creation for network building, and relational annotation to visualize networks and GIS data. Attendees will gain insight into the utility of these methods in historical research based on East Asian texts.

About the speaker:

Jing Hu is a social historian specializing in Chosŏn Korea and a digital humanities specialist. She is currently a Research Librarian in the East Asia department at the Berlin State Library. She earned her MA degree in Cultural Informatics from the Academy of Korean Studies in 2014. Between 2014 and 2016, she worked as a researcher at Renmin University of China. Subsequently, she has pursued her PhD at Leiden University (2016-2022) and KU Leuven (2022-present). During her doctoral journey, she contributed to development projects such as the Korean text annotation platform K-MARKUS (https://dh.chinese-empires.eu/markus/) and the text comparison platform ZGZY Parallels (https://dh.chinese-empires.eu/zgzy/?ed=MOD&ch=1&psg=).

Date: 6 November 2023 (Mon)
Time: 6 pm (HK time)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Dr Barbara McGillivray
Lecturer in Digital Humanities and Cultural Computation
King’s College London

About the talk:

Thanks to the increasing availability of digital textual collections and the advancement of data-intensive techniques from the computational sciences, a unique opportunity has emerged for testing these methods in contemporary humanities research. An especially suitable domain for this endeavour is the investigation of the evolution of word meanings. This field has broad applicability and relevance that extends far beyond the realm of linguistic research, encompassing disciplines such as history, literary studies, lexicography, and classics. Moreover, computational linguistics research has recently focused on this area, leading to the development of various algorithms aimed at automatically identifying semantic shifts from corpus data, albeit with varying degrees of success. In this talk, Dr. McGillivray will provide an overview of computational techniques for analysing shifts in meaning within historical texts. Discussions will be informed by her work on ancient Greek, Latin, historical English, and contemporary. Emphasis will be placed on methodological considerations, highlighting the broader implications of this research in digital humanities.

About the Speaker:

Barbara is a digital humanist and computational linguist. Before joining King’s in 2021, Barbara was Turing research fellow at The Alan Turing Institute and at the University of Cambridge between 2017 and 2021. Before that, she worked as language technologist in the Dictionary division of Oxford University Press and as data scientist in the Open Research Group of Springer Nature. She obtained her PhD in computational linguistics from the University of Pisa (Italy) in 2010, after a Master’s degree in Mathematics and a Bachelor’s degree in Classics from the University of Firenze (Italy). She is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Open Humanities Data and co-Investigator of the Living with Machines project. She is also Turing fellow at The Alan Turing Institute, UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, and president of SIGHUM, ACL’s special interest group on Language Technologies for the Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities.

Briefing on 3D Printing and 3D Modeling

Date: 31 October 2023
Time: 3 -4 pm
Venue: Digital Scholarship Lab, University Library

Presentations download
3D Printing & Humanities by Prof. Stuart McManus

3D Modeling and Printing by Ms. Carol Kong

3D Printed Museum Competition Application Form, click here to download

Interested in presenting your work at an academic conference? Want to know more about how to prepare an engaging research talk or poster presentation?

24 Nov. (Fri.) 4:30 – 6:00 pm

ARC G03 (G/F, Lee Shau Kee Architecture Building)

Registration: Sign up here

Join us for this 90-minute session, during which Prof. James ST. ANDRÉ of the Department of Translation and Prof. Tongle SUN of the Department of English will share their strategies for giving effective virtual and in-person research talks and poster presentations. The session will consist of a 60-minute presentation by Profs. St. André and Sun, followed by a 30-minute Q & A. All are welcome!

Date: 3 October 2023 (Tue)
Time: 5 pm(HK time)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Prof. Adam Crymble
Associate Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of Information Studies
University College London

Technology may be global, but our use of it in humanities work is profoundly local. The digital skills that are widely promoted to humanities scholars in London vary from those taught in Bogota Colombia, or Bengaluru India, and probably also from those easily available to you in Hong Kong. The reasons for these variations are many, including language, research culture, economics, and historical factors (for example, did your region colonise somewhere else, or was it colonised?). These skills variations can lead to real strengths and locally-driven approaches to education that create centres of excellence in particular fields. But, because few people notice the differences unless they move abroad, there is a risk that local digital skills culture may leave some scholars missing out on approaches that would really help them to excel. This talk discusses the importance of taking charge of your skills development and of ensuring that your local digital skills provision is well suited to the tasks local scholars really need, not just what has always been taught.

This talk emphasizes the significance of locally tailored digital skills development for humanities scholars. While technology is global, its application varies based on factors like language, research culture, and history. These variations can create centres of excellence but may leave some scholars without access to beneficial approaches. To excel, scholars must take charge of their skills development, ensuring that local digital skills provision aligns with their specific needs. Institutions should also adapt their curriculum to meet changing demands. By embracing these principles, scholars can bridge gaps, leverage technology effectively, and contribute to the advancement of knowledge in their fields.

About the speaker:

Dr Adam Crymble is an Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at University College London in the United Kingdom. He is a founding editor of the award-winning Programming Historian, a multilingual suite of publications that offer more than 200 free digital skills tutorials in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. His research looks at how digital approaches to scholarship can help us to better understand the history of migration. His most recent book, Technology and the Historian (2021), looks at how the discipline of history has evolved in the digital era, and the challenges and opportunities that have presented

Date: 25 September 2023 (Mon)
Time: 12 noon (HK time)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Quinn Dombrowski,
Academic Technology Specialist in Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
Center for Interdisciplinary Digital Research
Stanford University

The approaches of computational text analysis have made it possible, for quite some time now, to ask certain literary questions at large scale. Methods such as topic modeling, stylometry, principal component analysis on word frequencies, and word vectors can be used to find thematic and topical patterns across large corpora, and answer questions that would be impossible to approach using traditional means. One reason why digital humanities has had a relatively limited impact on the field of literary analysis is the fact that those large-scale questions resonate less well with the field more broadly. Within the last five years, advances in natural-language processing (NLP) techniques have made it possible to do meaningful computational work on a scale similar to that used by more traditional scholars, making it possible to analyze a text at the level of the sentence, and track a character’s description or action in detail. Shifting the scale of reading that computational methods can support from broad themes across large corpora, to individual character actions has significant potential for bringing digital humanists into a closer dialogue with traditional literary scholars, but the exact nature of what can be analyzed depends to a great extent on the language of the text, and what markers (e.g. politeness, gender, time) are explicitly encoded in the grammar. This talk will take as a starting point work on distinctive character verbs done through a Stanford Literary Lab project on Star Wars novels. It will explore how tools like spaCy and David Bamman’s BookNLP can allow us to computationally pursue questions with greater crossover interest into traditional literary studies, as well as the affordance of different languages when gathering evidence for making a traditional literary studies argument. Finally, it will touch on the evolving landscape of copyright law and fair dealing in Hong Kong and the US, as it relates to acquiring texts in the necessary form to do this kind of analysis.

About the speaker:

Quinn Dombrowski (non-binary, any pronouns are fine) is the Academic Technology Specialist in the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and in the Library, at Stanford University. Prior to coming to Stanford in 2018, Quinn’s many DH adventures included supporting the high-performance computing cluster at UC Berkeley, running the DiRT tool directory with support from the Mellon Foundation, writing books on Drupal for Humanists and University of Chicago library graffiti, and working on the program staff of Project Bamboo, a failed digital humanities cyberinfrastructure initiative.  Quinn has a BA/MA in Slavic Linguistics from the University of Chicago, and an MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since coming to Stanford, Quinn has supported numerous non-English DH projects, taught courses on non-English DH, started a Textile Makerspace, developed a tabletop roleplaying game to teach DH project management, explored trends in multilingual Harry Potter fanfic, and started the Data-Sitters Club, a feminist DH pedagogy and research group focused on Ann M. Martin’s 90’s girls series “The Baby-Sitters Club”. Quinn is currently co-VP of the Association for Computers and the Humanities along with Roopika Risam, and advocates for better support for DH in languages other than English.

Date: 18 September 2023 (Mon)
Time: 12 noon (HK time)
On Zoom
Language: English

Please click here to register

Speaker:
Wayne de Fremery, PhD
Professor of Information Science and Entrepreneurship,
Director of the Françoise O. Lepage Center for Global Innovation,
Dominican University of California

This talk will suggest that the old art and science of bibliography is integral to the business of the digital humanities. Business in this context is meant to suggest the work done in the digital humanities and the entrepreneurial opportunities afforded to digital humanists in academia, industry, and as entrepreneurs. Recognizing the bibliography’s centrality to humanistic practice as it has been shaped by digital technologies helps to illuminate the ways that the digital humanities have been formulated as a field. Moreover, understanding the integral role played by bibliography in humanistic practice reveals ways that digital humanists can productively contribute to humanistic understanding while also transgressing the conceptual limits of the contemporary humanities to make contributions to other fields in academia, as well as contributions to industry and society as analysts and researchers, businesspeople and entrepreneurs.

About the speaker:

Before joining Dominican, Prof. Wayne de Fremery was an associate professor of Korean Studies in the School of Media, Arts, and Science at Sogang University in South Korea, where he lived for twenty years. He currently represents the Korean National Body at ISO as Convener of a working group on document description, processing languages, and semantic metadata (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 WG 9). He is also owner of Tamal Vista Insights LLC, an independent producer of software that democratizes access to artificial intelligence, as well as Director of the Korea Text Initiative at the Cambridge Institute for the Study of Korea. Work by Prof. de Fremery has recently appeared in The Materiality of Reading, Library Hi Tech, A Companion to World Literature, Translation Review, and the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. His latest book, Cats, Carpenters, and Accountants: Bibliographical Foundations of Information Science, is forthcoming from MIT Press in the spring of 2024.

Professor Emily Wilcox, Associate Professor of Chinese Studies, William & Mary, USA

Date: 12 September 2023 (Tue)
Time: 5:00 – 6:30pm
Venue: Institute of Chinese Studies Theatre, CUHK
Click here to reserve a seat

About the speaker:

Emily Wilcox is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at William & Mary and formerly Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan. Wilcox is the author or co-editor of five books: Revolutionary Bodies: Chinese Dance and the Socialist Legacy (University of California Press, 2018, winner of the 2019 de la Torre Bueno Prize® from the Dance Studies Association); Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2020), 革命的身体：重新认识现当代中国舞蹈文化 (Fudan University Press, 2023); Inter-Asia in Motion: Dance as Method (Routledge, 2024); and Teaching Film from the People’s Republic of China (Modern Language Association, 2024). She is also co-creator of the University of Michigan Chinese Dance Collection. In fall 2023, Wilcox will be a member in residence in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where she is writing a book on international dance exchange in Mao-era China.

The RIH is delighted to announce that three proposals have been selected as the 2023 Interdisciplinary Initiative Projects. The projects are Transnational Urban Humanities, Archaeological Science in Hong Kong and South Asia From Asia Initiative.  

The RIH Interdisciplinary Initiative has the following aims: to encourage interdisciplinary research crossing the boundaries of individual academic units, to promote collaboration among faculty members in the Faculty of Arts with shared intellectual interests, and to develop interdisciplinary research in new areas with the support of a knowledgeable, diverse group of colleagues. The three chosen projects have shown a clear emphasis on integrating interdisciplinary research and innovation into a dynamic and impactful continuum.   

	Transnational Urban Humanities This initiative provides an interdisciplinary platform for humanities scholars working in different fields, locations, and periods to examine the interconnected cultures and aesthetics of understudied cities in Asia and elsewhere. It also aims to cultivate networks between urban humanities scholars at CUHK with other universities in Hong Kong and overseas.
	Archaeological Science in Hong Kong This initiative facilitates dialogue and knowledge exchange on a wide range of topics related to the human past. Researchers can share the latest developments in their respective fields through themed technical workshops and focus group meetings. Ultimately, this initiative will help advance the study of the human past by strengthening the collaborative network to address research interests more effectively.
	South Asia From Asia Initiative The aim of this initiative will be in three main areas: research, pedagogy, and public interaction. Research: it will develop research collaboration between interdisciplinary members, and give a venue to present research. Pedagogy: there will be mentoring of PG and UG students interested in South Asia, as well as course development. Public interaction: it will hold public talks and events highlighting South Asian connections in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and East Asia.

Each project will receive around HK$150,000 to cover the cost of activities. Congratulations to all and all the best for the journey ahead! 

Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School Experience
(3 – 7 July 2023)

LI, Tong
Year 2, Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies

I am grateful for the scholarship I received from the Research Institute for the Humanities to support me to attend the 2023 Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School. This opportunity allowed me to learn about the latest trends and innovations in the field of digital humanities.

During the summer school, I attended workshops, seminars, lectures and a poster session that covered a wide range of topics related to digital humanities. These included text analysis, digital geomapping, and artificial intelligence, among others. I obtained hands-on experience with tools, software and technologies, such as data modelling, visualization, network analysis, and digital archives processing. Through group discussions and social events, I was able to learn from diverse perspectives and build connections with potential collaborators in this exciting field.

My experience at the digital humanities summer school in Oxford is tremendously beneficial for my future research. I gained a deeper understanding of the digital methods and technologies for humanities research, and I look forward to applying these skills and knowledge to my research endeavours.

L: Workshop on computational text analysis
M: In the gothic Dining Hall of Keble College, Oxford
R: Lecture on the role of machine learning in humanities research

RIH is excited to announce the recipient of the 2023 Digital Humanities Research Seed Grants – Dr. Lidia Zhou from the Department of Translation. We are proud to support her DH research journey.

This seed grant aims to fund the initial development of new research projects that will analyze digital sources, apply algorithmic methods to humanities data, or create digital publications, exhibits, or websites.

As an advocator of digital humanities at CUHK, RIH provides financial and educational support to help research staff and students achieve their goals through the use of digital humanities technologies.

The first networking event organised by the Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) was held successfully on Thursday, 27 April 2023. Around 60 faculty members and research students from the Faculty of Arts joined the tea gathering at the Arts & Humanities Hub at the G/F of Fung King Hey Building.

Prof. Jeremy Yellen, the Acting Director of RIH and Prof. Stuart McManus, the Acting Director of Digital Humanities Initiatives briefed the guests on the work of RIH and introduced the new initiatives in the beginning of the gathering. Then, a warm welcome speech was given by Dean of Arts, Professor Max Xiaobing Tang. In his speech, Dean Tang encouraged the faculty members and research students to unleash their research creativities and potentials by seizing the RIH Interdisciplinary Reading Groups sponsorship for the RPg students and the Interdisciplinary Initiatives for the faculty members.

It was a joyful gathering with good foods, good drinks, refreshing ideas and inspiring discussions.

Day of Digital Humanities (DH)

A Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities is an event where digital humanists from around the world document what they do. Day of DH began in 2009, at the University of Alberta and has been hosted by other institutions since that time. Day of DH has also been adopted by specific language communities that extend beyond national borders. On 24 April 2023, the Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) in collaboration with the University Library’s Digital Scholarship Lab hosted the first-ever Day of DH on the University campus to celebrate the development of digital humanities.

We were honoured to have invited Professor Donald Sturgeon, creator and administrator of Chinese Text Project (ctext.org) and Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Durham University (UK) as the keynote speaker. In the keynote talk “Working with pre-modern Chinese texts in the digital age”, Prof. Donald Sturgeon showed the audiences how enormous amount of pre-modern Chinese texts could be manipulated and analysed with the help of DH.

Topic: Working with pre-modern Chinese texts in the digital age
Pre-modern Chinese texts have been objects of scholarship for hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of years. Over this time, technological innovations have repeatedly transformed how scholars interact with these materials in their everyday work. This talk focuses on developments and changes to these modes of interaction since the beginning of the digital age. In particular, it will focus on the role of different digital representations of content, how these connect to one another, and their advantages and limitations in practice.

Just before lunch, participants had a guided tour at the Digital Scholarship Lab and the MakerSpace to understand how the library DH supports and 3-D printing sparks greater creativity and collaboration in solving problems in different fields.

Prof. McManus, Acting Director of Digital Humanities Initiatives Program gave an introduction on the upcoming DH courses and programs in the next semester.

To echo the theme of Day of DH, RIH invited Faculty of Arts students from different universities to share their passion on digital research methodologies. Professor Javier Cha, Digital Humanities in the Department of History, HKU and his students shared and exchanged ideas of their on-going DH projects with the participants.

Date: 24 April 2023 (Monday)
Time: 10am – 5pm
Venue: Digital Scholarship Lab (G/F, University Library), the Chinese University of Hong Kong

10:00 Keynote talk by Prof. Donald Sturgeon “Working with pre-modern Chinese texts in the digital age”

11:30 DS Lab Tour & 3-D Printing Demo

13:00 Lunch (will be provided for full-day participants)

14:15 Introduction to DH course & programming

15:15 Short Break

15:30 DH project presentations

17:00 Conclusion

The RIH Digital Humanities Research (Teaching Staff) Seed Grants program application is open. The deadline to apply is 30 April, 2023.
In 2023, the Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) will fund up to 3 teaching staff research projects that are intended using digital technologies in their humanities research.

Awardees will each receive up to a HK$10,000 grant.
 Visit Apply page
 Share program flyer with others

Who Should Apply

Teaching staff affiliated with the Faculty of Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

This program supports teaching staff who are intended to apply digital technologies in their research projects.

Benefits

Awardees will each receive up to HK$10,000 grant.

Key Dates

22 February 2023: Application Opens
30 April, 2023: Application deadline (5:00 p.m.)
8 May, 2023: Grantee notification

Use of Funds

Applicants should submit a proposal with a budget indicating how the Grant will be spent, payment/reimbursement will be settled against valid invoices/receipts. All expenditure must be in compliance with the University fiscal regulations.

Grant funding can cover or offset expenditures such as:
Program-related research expenses (materials, analysis),
Prototype development, testing, and validation,
Publication of data, and
Other relevant expenses.

Program Expectations

Grantees will require to give a project completion presentation to share their digital humanities research experience. And to acknowledge having received the Grant from the Grantor in their research papers.

Contact

For more information about the program, email Ms. Basmah Lok, The Research Institute for the Humanities.

 Visit Apply page

DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE TALK SERIES

Academic Entrepreneurship: Lessons from History (Zoom)

Speaker: Dr. Michael Tworek
CEO & Co-Founder, Polis Educational Solutions
Associate, Department of History, Harvard University

16 January 2023 (Mon)
12 noon (HKT)/ 11PM (EST) 15 Jan
Online via Zoom

About the event

Most people don’t associate entrepreneurs with historians. This talk will explore how historical scholarship can be a fruitful springboard for startup ideas in tech. Using his personal example of starting two successful companies in the last five years, Dr. Tworek will discuss how his own research and teaching in the history of education and Renaissance humanism informed his journey to becoming a CEO and startup founder.

About the speaker

Dr. Michael Tworek is a research associate in the Harvard History Department, where he earned his PhD in 2014. He is an affiliate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University and an instructor at the Harvard Extension School. Michael’s research and teaching focus on the history of education and intellectual and cultural life of early modern Europe from transcontinental and global perspectives.

Michael’s work has been supported by Fulbright (IIE/U.S. State Department), the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Fulbright-Hays (U.S. Department of Education), Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS).

Concurrently, Michael is also the CEO and co-founder of Polis, an edtech startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that has grown out of his research and teaching and is currently part of a select alumni cohort of companies at the iLab at Harvard Business School.

The RIH Digital Humanities Student Seed Grants program application is open. The deadline to apply is 26 January, 2023.
In 2023, the Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) will fund up to 5 undergraduate final year projects and postgraduate theses that are intended using digital technologies in their humanities research.

Awardees will each receive a HK$4,000 grant.
? Visit Apply page
? Share program flyer with others

Who Should Apply

Undergraduate senior years students and postgraduate students affiliated with the Faculty of Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

This program supports students who are intended to apply digital technologies in their theses/ final year projects/ dissertations. The deadline to apply for the 2023 Students Seed Grants is 26 January 2023.

Benefits

Awardees will each receive a HK$4,000 grant.

Key Dates

12 December, 2022: Application Opens
9 January 2023 (5pm): Applicant Info Session on Zoom (Registration)
26 January, 2023: Application deadline (5:00 p.m.)
7 February, 2023: Grantee notification

Use of Funds

Applicants should submit a proposal with a budget indicating how the Grant will be spent, payment/reimbursement will be settled against valid invoices/receipts. All expenditure must be in compliance with the University fiscal regulations.

Grant funding can cover or offset expenditures such as:
Program-related research expenses (materials, analysis),
Prototype development, testing, and validation,
Publication of data, and
Other relevant expenses.

Program Expectations

Grantees will require to give a project completion presentation to share their digital humanities research experience. And to acknowledge having received the Grant from the Grantor in their theses/ final year projects/ dissertations.

Contact

For more information about the program, email Ms. Basmah Lok, The Research Institute for the Humanities.

? Visit Apply page

Please click here to register.

DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE TALK SERIES

The Documentary Archaeology of Late Medieval Europe: A Contribution to Digital Scholarship (Zoom)

Speaker: Professor Daniel Lord Smail, Department of History, Harvard University

28 November 2022 (Mon)
10AM (HKT)/ 9PM (EST)
Online via Zoom
Registration: https://bit.ly/3DgoCyj 

About the event:
European archives preserve thousands of household or estate inventories from the period 1250-1500 CE. These records are similar in nature to records known in China as fendan or yizhu, which were generated by the process of household division (fenjia). Estate inventories provide valuable insights into European material culture in an era before the rise of the modern global economy.

The DALME project (https://dalme.org/) seeks to collect, transcribe, publish, and analyze a sample of inventories from later medieval Europe. This talk will present the collection and describe the methodologies and techniques of digital scholarship that Prof. Smail’s team currently developing and implementing.

About the speaker:
Professor Daniel Lord Smail is Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of History at Harvard University, where he works on the history and anthropology of Mediterranean societies between 1100 and 1600 and on deep human history. In medieval European history, his work has explored the legal, social, and cultural history of the cities of Mediterranean Europe, with a focus on Marseille in the later Middle Ages. He has covered subjects ranging from women and Jews to legal history and spatial imagination, which was the subject of his first book, Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille (1999). His most recent book, Legal Plunder: Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe (Harvard University Press, 2016), approaches transformations in the material culture of the later Middle Ages using household inventories and inventories of debt collection from Lucca and Marseille. With Gabriel Pizzorno and Laura Morreale and contributors, he recently published the online collection “The Documentary Archaeology of Late Medieval Europe.” He is currently working on a book featuring an enslaved Berber woman in early fifteenth-century Marseille who engineered her own self-manumission.

DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE TALK SERIES

Early Modern Letters Online: (Re)Collecting Correspondence and (Re)Connecting Correspondence Networks (ZOOM)

Speaker: Ms. Miranda Lewis

Date: 14 November 2022 (Mon)
Time: 5pm (HKT)/ 9am (GMT)
Online via Zoom
Medium of Instruction: English
Registration: https://bit.ly/3EZM5Ff 

About the event: 

Based on the work of the Oxford digital humanities research project Cultures of Knowledge, this paper will discuss the evolution of an international union catalogue of early modern letters. Citing examples from a wide range of correspondences, it will discuss how best to recombine the written exchanges recorded in manuscript letters that are preserved today in numerous archives around the world, whilst also enabling scholars to interrogate the accumulated metadata in revealing ways.

About the speaker:

Ms. Miranda Lewis is the editor of the union catalogue of correspondence Early Modern Letters Online. Miranda is an Associate Member of the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford, where she works and publishes on a range of early modern correspondence-related topics.

DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE TALK SERIES

OpenGulf: Toward a Post-National Digital History 

Speakers:
Professor Nora Barakat, Department of History, Stanford University, and
Professor David Wrisley, Department of Digital Humanities, New York University Abu Dhabi 

Date: Monday, 24 October 2022
Time:  12:00PM (HKT)
Online via Zoom
Medium of Instruction: English
Registration: https://bit.ly/3RQQRru 

This lecture will discuss transnational research collaboration on the interconnected histories of the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean Rim. Professor Barakat and Professor Wrisley argue that a multilingual, multi-archive approach is necessary to construct a future of historical inquiry for the region and that it is the digital which allows researchers to bring those histories into explicit dialogue. The talk will also feature examples of handwritten text recognition (HTR), mapping and textual analysis.

DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE TALK SERIES

Digital Resources for the History of the Book (Zoom)

A presentation of the international digital resources which support sophisticated historical research on the European printed book heritage

Speaker: Professor Cristina Dondi
Professor of Early European Book Heritage, and Oakeshott Senior Research Fellow in the Humanities at Lincoln College, University of Oxford.

Date: 17 October 2022 (Mon)
Time: 16:00 – 17:30  (HKT) / 09:00 – 10:30 (BST)
Online via Zoom
Medium of Instruction: English
Registration: https://bit.ly/3rAcd1y

About the event: 

A presentation of the international digital resources which support sophisticated historical research on the European printed book heritage

About the speaker:

Professor Cristina Dondi is Professor of Early European Book Heritage, and Oakeshott Senior Research Fellow in the Humanities at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. She is also the Secretary of the Consortium of European Research Libraries. During the period 2014-2019 she was the Principal Investigator of the 15cBOOKTRADE Project, funded by the European Research Council.

Her research focuses on the history of printing and the booktrade in 15th century Europe, using surviving books as primary historical sources to understand the economic and social impact of the printing revolution on European society. Also, on the reconstruction of dispersed book collections and the transmission of texts in print. https://www.lincoln.ox.ac.uk/Fellows/CristinaDondi

DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE TALK SERIES

Is there a Digital Legal History? 

Speaker: Dr. Andreas Wagner, Digital Humanities Coordinator, Max-Planck-Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (mpilhlt, Frankfurt)

Date: 10 October 2022 (Mon)
Time: 16:00 – 17:30  (HKT)
Online via Zoom
Medium of Instruction: English
Registration: https://bit.ly/3RDyI10 
Registration Deadline: 7 October 2022 (Friday)

About the event 
In this talk, Dr. Wagner will sketch how, in legal historical literature, Digital Humanities develop a profile distinct from literary, historical and empirical legal studies. In comparison to other literary genres, the law’s emphasis on proven efficiency and predictability, rather than on originality, means that text re-use strategies are paramount. However, different legal contexts employ different terminology (what one English-language constitution calls a chamber, another may call a house) posing significant challenges. In contrast to ‘general’ historical studies, legal history is interested in extracting normative motives – prescriptions, conditions, roles – from sources directly rather than extracting events, persons, places and perhaps extrapolating historical regimes of normativity from that basis. Finally, compared with applied legal and empirical legal studies, the formulaic style that is common in legal sources (and convenient for processing) contrasts with the less-resourced and non-regular character of historical languages. 

About the speaker 
Dr. Andreas Wagner (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1835-1653) is Digital Humanities Coordinator at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt, and collaborator of the project “The School of Salamanca” of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz. He has obtained a PhD in philosophy in 2008, and has worked with digital methods and digital editions since 2013. In terms of DH, his main areas of interest are Digital Editions, NLP and Knowledge Graphs; however, he is also still studying and publishing on early modern political and legal thought. Topics of his recent publications include early modern international law, data modelling with uncertain knowledge, and text mining in legal history.

DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE TALK SERIES

Digital Humans – Exploring the Humanity in Digital Humanities (Zoom)

Speaker: Dr. Megan Gooch, Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship, University of Oxford

Date: 5 October 2022 (Wed)
Time: 17:00 – 18:30  (HKT)
Online via Zoom
Medium of Instruction: English
Registration: https://bit.ly/3R17IHR 
Registration Deadline: 5 October 2022 (Wed) 12 noon (HKT)

About the event

Digital humanities means many things to many people – we talk of DH as being a range of methods, technologies, theoretical approaches to ask and answer research questions. But unlike traditional forms of humanities research, the research projects is not often one that can be tackled alone. DH nearly always requires collaboration with people from different subject domains, with technical experts and often with non-academic staff such as librarians, museum staff or administrative support. This paper explores the impact of this growth in collaboration – and some of the questions it raises about the nature of DH research – who ‘owns’ the research, who is credited for it, how are collaborative research outputs sustained? But perhaps more fundamental is the question of the ‘soft’ and most definitely human skills that are needed to engage in a fundamentally digital mode of research.

About the speaker

Dr Megan Gooch is the Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Digital Humanities @ Oxford Summer School. She works in the Bodleian Libraries and University administration service to support digital scholarship across the University. Megan previously worked in the museums sector and held jobs at Historic Royal Palaces and the British Museum in curatorial, public engagement and research roles.

DIGITAL HUMANITIES INITIATIVE TALK SERIES

Speaker: Professor Javier Cha, Department of History, The University of Hong Kong

Date: Monday, 19 September 2022
Time: 16:00 –17:30
Hybrid event: in person or on Zoom
Venue: Digital Scholarship Lab, G/F University Library
Medium of Instruction: English
Registration: https://bit.ly/3q3ryqy
Registration Deadline: 16 September 2022 (Friday)
  

About the event
Fine-Tuning the Historian’s Macroscope: Data Reuse and Medieval Korean Biographical Records in Neo4j is part of the Digital Humanities Initiative Talk offered by the Research Institute for the Humanities of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in collaboration with the University Library.  

In this talk, Prof. Cha will show us how to break new ground on digital historical scholarship. Prof. Cha will propose the idea that historians build project-specific personal libraries rather than engage in macro-level “distant readings” of a centralized repository. His methodological intervention emphasizes contextualization and authentication in data-driven historical research, which, in technological terms, translates into robust management of records culled from a variety of pertinent databases. Using medieval Korean biographical records as an example, Prof. Cha will demonstrate how digital historians can use a Neo4j-powered macroscope to zero in on potentially insightful fields of view.
 

About the speaker
Prof. Javier Cha is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Hong Kong. As an intellectual historian of medieval Korea and a technologist, he has been active in the digital humanities community for fourteen years. Prof. Cha is the director of the Big Data Studies Lab, which examines data centers and the global telecommunications infrastructure in a manner comparable to how a book historian investigates medieval manuscripts and libraries. He serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing and Cursor Mundi, as well as the international nominations committee for Digital Humanities Awards. 

Free and open to the public, this series of webinars will present research by a diverse group of scholars from the Faculty of Arts at CUHK. Each speaker will bring refreshing and historical perspectives on our contemporary moment, either directly or through reflection. Together, these public events will speak for the value and relevance of humanities scholarship at a time when we face profound global challenges. Lectures will be about 30 minutes in length, followed by a question and answer session with the audience.

http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/web/en-gb/aboutus/events/534-public-online-lectures-arts-andhumanities- in-the-face-of-global-challenges

The Research Institute for the Humanities and the Leung Po Chuen Research Centre for Hong Kong History and Humanities of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau will host a two-day conference on 5-6 March 2020 in Hong Kong. Historians, urbanists, architects and specialists in heritage and museums from Hong Kong and France will exchange their ideas on urban planning and heritage conservation in Hong Kong and Paris.

Cities are a crucial attribute of the rise of human civilisation. The identity of a city is always inseparable from its history. Unlike the history of politics, economy, thoughts or cultures, which observes a city merely from the perspective of personalities or events, urban history analyses a city’s evolution process, the turning points in its transformation and the reasons for its breakthroughs in order to identify keys to its future development. A review of a city allows us to reconstruct our identity by revisiting various landmarks, historical sites and characteristics of spatial design. The process by which a city is built from scratch depends on its geographical environment, inhabitants, economic resources, development status of its neighbouring regions, as well as objective economic and political circumstances. As a city’s population grows continuously and its structure changes, its government’s pace of urban development is influenced by the measures employed to address urgent social needs. How does a city’s early construction and planning reflect the cultural encounters and conflicts of different civilisations? What are the factors that cause town planning to adapt and change with the times? What opportunities does its government make use of to introduce urban development models of other cities? How major a role does conservation and revitalisation of historical sites and buildings play in urban renewal policies? Are there conflicts between urban renewal and new planning? How do the authorities balance the interests of different parties through urban planning and achieve established goals? These are all questions worth exploring in depth.

To facilitate discussion and exchange of ideas, the conference will be organised into three sessions:

1. Origins and transformation
2. Conception and governance
3. Conservation and revitalisation

經過前三屆的經驗纍積，今年（2019）中大伊斯蘭文化節不只擴大了規模，其節目內容亦比以往更爲豐富。文化節開幕禮嘉賓、大學通識教育主任梁美儀教授認為，這一文化盛宴是｢培養世界公民身份的重要校園活動之一｣。梁教授形容文化節八天的活動為｢經過精心構思，並在藝術與智性兩方面均多姿多彩｣。另外，文化節首次吸引到媒體採訪，且在電視節目黃金時段獲專題報導。

本屆文化節由10月26日開始至11月2日結束。與去年一樣，阿文書法工作坊為文化節拉開了序幕，緊接的是繽紛多彩的慶典日活動。在中大文化廣場舉行的慶典日將伊斯蘭文化的多個面向鮮活地呈現出來，學生、教職員踴躍參加，氣氛熱烈，黃金時間電視節目｢港臺電視31自在8點半｣更派出攝製隊前來拍攝。其後的清真美食工作坊，讓參加者度過了一個既有教育意義又輕鬆愜意的夜晚。文化節期間的星期五，在中大校園內進行的伊斯蘭聚禮亦開放給教外人士旁觀，成為促進跨文化理解的一個機會。文化節其他活動還包括兩場英文講座（題目分別為：｢從伊斯蘭的視角看和平與正義｣與｢伊斯蘭與包容｣）、電影（Reluctant Fundamentalist，中譯名｢拉合爾茶館的陌生人｣）觀賞與討論會及清真寺導賞團。

清真美食工作坊是今年文化節的嶄新嘗試，對參加者來說，無疑是一次興奮的體驗。工作坊首先安排專人講解何爲清真（halal）飲食，隨後問答環節的同時，有外籍穆斯林婦女現場製作土耳其菜式。最後，工作坊準備了多國不同風味的清真美食，供參加者品嘗，整個活動由此進入高潮。總括來説，輕鬆愉快的氛圍、教育意義、琳琅美食，這三個元素把工作坊打造成一次非凡的體驗。

今年伊斯蘭文化節報名人數刷新了記錄，主要原因是文化節前發生了與伊斯蘭相關的社會事件。文化節舉辦前一周，九龍清真寺於警方在彌敦道驅散示威者時，被其藍色水炮誤射而成為新聞頭條。次日上午，香港特首與警務處長登門致歉。由此九龍清真寺頓時成為全城關注的焦點。位於繁華商業區的黃金地段，九龍清真寺長期被本地華人視爲一處神秘的地方，對之極爲好奇。在如此背景下，無怪文化節的清真寺導賞團成為最受歡迎的項目，報名人數頓時躍升。九龍清真寺事件引發公眾對清真寺及伊斯蘭文化產生濃厚興趣，甚至有多個社交平臺主動幫助宣傳文化節活動。期望公眾對伊斯蘭文化的興趣在這一巔峰時期後能夠持續下去。伊斯蘭文化節有望成爲市民大衆瞭解伊斯蘭文化的主要途徑。

與往年一樣，第四屆伊斯蘭文化節旨在推動校園多元文化交流，以及促進中大與社會大眾對伊斯蘭文化的瞭解。文化節是中大伊斯蘭文化研究中心舉辦的周年活動。

活動錄影：https://youtu.be/zBh91tWp4rE

The RIH hosted a two-day conference on 6-7 December 2018 on Environmental Humanities. It brought together ideas and insights of 35 scholars from the continents of America, Asia and Europe to probe beyond the realm of ecology of narratives that overwhelmingly centred on research about nature but without paying due consideration to human behaviour. The information gathered in this conference came from varied experiences gained from a broad spectrum of cultural aspects, analyses of different natures, from history to culture, from art to religions, and from language to philosophy.

The conference was honoured to have Prof. FOK Tai-fai, Pro Vice-Chancellor, and Prof. LAI Ping-chiu, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, officiating at the opening ceremony. The keynote speech was presented by Prof. Frederick DAVIS, R. Mark Lubbers Chair in the History of Science, Professor of History, Department of History, Purdue University, USA. The title of his speech was “The Wonder of Rachel Carson: Nature and Emotion in Environmental Humanities”.

Professor Ho, a social and economic historian who previously worked as a research consultant at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, now teaches in the History Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and is Director of the Research Institute for the Humanities. She has published numerous books and articles on Hong Kong and social and economic history of modern Chinese society, with a focus on the urbanisation of modern day Hong Kong. Her books have focused on aspects of city development such as land use, colonial government history, public housing and urban planning. She is also interested in urban space and social development, power and governance, environment, tradition versus modernity and globalisation. She firmly believes that interaction between academia and society can facilitate integration of theory into society for the betterment of people’s daily lives.

Tung Wah Hospital has preserved its historical documents since its establishment in 1870. These valuable materials are indispensable for understanding modern Hong Kong’s social evolution, as well as its medical history. With the use of Tung Wah archives, this lecture offers new perspectives on the study of modern medical history by addressing the following topics: How was Western medicine introduced into the Chinese hospital? What were the controversies over the preservation or abolishment of Chinese medicine? How effective were Chinese and Western medical treatments?

Two workshops on the usage of “Multi-function Chinese Character Database” were organized by Research Centre for Humanities Computing:

The Research Institute for the Humanities will host a two-day conference on 6-7 Dec 2018, gathering scholars from CUHK and institutes across the world. Scholars will share their work as part of their effort to foster interdisciplinary conversation and learning. Presenters will bring a humanities perspective to the understanding of landscapes, empires, imagined environments, and the boundaries of nature and humanity.

Environmental humanities involves human beings and non-humans (animals, plants, minerals, objects, etc.), as well as a certain number of critical positions (post-capitalism, post-humanism, post-colonialism, rejection of anthropocentrism, distance with constructivism) that deserve to be discussed and confronted. The objective is to enrich pre-existing conjunctions across environmental philosophy, environmental history, ecocriticism (cultural geography, cultural anthropology and political ecology, including their debates as captured by environmental humanities. These alliances could help build environmental humanities across regions, environments, and animals.

To contribute to such debates, the Conference will focus on seven broadly formulated topics and questions:

1. The Management of Nature in the Ancient World
2. Eco-Humanities: History, Narratives and Reflections
3. Body and Nature
4. Religion and Environment
5. The High North: Arctic Encounters
6. Nature at the Point of No Return? Philosophical Reflections
7. Survival of the Fittest: A Historical Perspective

The Research Institute for the Humanities and the Leung Po Chuen Research Centre for Hong Kong History and Humanities will host a two-day international conference on Environmental Humanities at The Chinese University of Hong Kong on 6-7 December 2018.

It gathers scholars from CUHK and institutes from across the world to share their work as part of their effort to foster interdisciplinary conversation and learning. Presenters will bring a humanities perspective to understanding the landscapes, empires, imagined environments, and the boundaries of nature and humanity.

Environmental humanities involve human beings and non-humans (animals, plants, minerals, objects, etc.), as well as a number of critical positions such as post-capitalism, post-humanism, post-colonialism, rejection of anthropocentrism, and distance with constructivism that deserve to be discussed and confronted. The objective is to enrich pre-existing conjunctions across environmental philosophy, environmental history, ecocriticism, cultural geography, cultural anthropology and political ecology, including their debates as captured by environmental humanities. These alliances can help build environmental humanities across regions and environments.

To contribute to such debates, the conference will focus on seven broadly formulated topics and questions:
1. The Management of Nature in the Ancient World
2. Eco-Humanities: History, Narratives and Reflections
3. Body and Nature
4. Religion and Environment
5. The High North: Arctic Encounters
6. Nature at the Point of No Return? Philosophical Reflections
7. Survival of the Fittest: A Historical Perspective

為期十天的香港中文大學第三屆伊斯蘭文化節於2018年11月20日完滿結束。本屆伊斯蘭文化節由一連串活動組成，包括阿拉伯書法工作坊、慶典日、伊斯蘭系列講座及清真寺導賞團。透過這些繽紛多彩的活動，主辦者嘗試從不同層面和不同面向展示博大精深的伊斯蘭文化，比如從信仰到生活實務，從教室到實地考察，從本港到世界各國。

多項活動中，以11月13日在中大文化廣場上舉行的慶典日最為熱鬧。當天廣場上擺設了7個攤位，中國、中亞、南亞、地中海4個攤位展示世界各地的伊斯蘭文化風情，清真食品攤位預備美味健康的清真食品供大家品嘗，“微笑是一種施捨”攤位宣揚微笑在伊斯蘭教導裡的意義，並為大家拍照留念，還有阿拉伯書法攤位，老師為大家示範阿拉伯書法及贈送書簽。慶典日的午間則進行了文化節的開幕儀式及表演節目，包括古蘭經和喚禮的誦讀、留學生樂器演奏和中國學生武術表演，好讓大家對伊斯蘭文化有方方面面不同的體驗。

另外，最受歡迎的活動可算是清真寺導賞團。11月17日導賞團40多名團友參觀了九龍清真寺和愛群清真寺，參觀期間且有伊斯蘭文化講座、清真點心品嚐，以及穆斯林和非穆斯林之間的互動交流，最後，團友到禮拜殿旁觀穆斯林集體禮拜。多位參加者均表示當天獲益良多，並期望日後有機會多認識伊斯蘭文化。

本屆伊斯蘭文化節其餘4個活動，分別為：
11月10日阿拉伯書法工作坊
11月16日講座“概述伊斯蘭”
11月19日講座“The World of the Qur’an”
11月20日講座“穆罕默德聖人是誰？”

一如以往，本屆伊斯蘭文化節旨在促進校園多元文化交流，並讓中大師生及社會大眾增加對伊斯蘭文化的認識和瞭解。

中大第三屆伊斯蘭文化節由中大伊斯文化研究中心主辦，並得到本港多個穆斯林團體的支援和參與，包括伊斯蘭文化協會（香港）、香港伊斯蘭聯會、香港回教婦女會及香港伊斯蘭青年協會。文化節的慶典日更由中大學生事務處轄下之國際化活動基金贊助部分經費。

Prof. Chen Wei J., Dean of the College of Public Health at National Taiwan University (NTU), Prof. Chiang Tung-liang and Prof. Chang Shu-sen led a group of 17 students from the College of Public Health at NTU to visit the Research Institute for the Humanities (RIH) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Dean Chen and his team arrived at Hong Kong on Feb 18, 2016, then they were invited to Tung Wah Hospital and Tung Wah Coffin Home to have a visit. Through this visit, they had an understanding of the history of Tung Wah Group Hospitals as both medical care institution and charitable institution.

In the morning of Feb 19, RIH has co-organized a seminar entitled “Nurturing Life in Time” with the the College of Public Health at the National Taiwan University. Prof. Chiang Tung-liang has given a keynote lecture on the topic “A Brief Comparison of Public Health Development in Taiwan and Hong Kong” and there were two themes of the seminar, “Regional Health in Perspectives” and “Saving Life: Reflections”. Dean Chen and Prof. Hsiung has also signed the MOU during this seminar.

On Feb 20 and 21, the NTU team had an academic visiting trip to Hong Kong Museum of History, Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences and Chungking Mansions.

The Research Institute for the Humanities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong has host the “Re-viewing Taiwan: Regional Developments in a Global Frame” Workshop on 22–23 October, 2015. The workshop is also co-organized by Collaborative Innovation Center for Peaceful Development of Cross-Strait Relations, Taiwan Research Institute, Xiamen University and Institute of Global and Public Affairs, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Macau. This two-day workshop is held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong on 22 October and at University of Macau on 23 October.

Taiwan, like most subjects, can be looked at from many different perspectives, certainly from more than one discipline. “Re-viewing Taiwan: Regional Developments in a Global Frame” has invited directors and scholars of Taiwan studies centers and programs from different regions and institutions to showcase to people how they choose to study this subject and their reasoning for so doing. Thus this workshop addressed the issue from cross-strait relations, Taiwanese arts, literature, and history, as well as a wide variety of disciplinary questions and interdisciplinary considerations.

The Re-viewing Taiwan workshop is sponsored by Andrew W. Mellon foundation “Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging” Project and “Focusing on Taiwan: Health, Peace, Memory” Project.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by Free University of Berlin to give a public lecture on “Envisioning an Eurasian Humanities Exchange”. In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung introduces the evolution of Chinese humanities at home and abroad, sinological studies in Europe and the regional studies heritage, western civilization as represented in China and Asia, and she also envisions a conversation and a common Future.

Prof. Richard von Glahn, Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, was invited to give a lecture on the development of maritime port cities in East Asia during 16th to 17th century.

Prof. Wong Young-tsu, Graduate Institute of History at the National Central University in Taiwan, was invited to give a lecture on the methodology of the studies on Republican Chinese history.

Prof. Liu Hsiang Kwang, Department of History at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan, was invited to give a lecture on the culture of divination and psychological health in Song Dynasty.

Prof. Shen Kuiyi, Department of Visual Arts and Director of Chinese Studies Programme at the University of California, San Diego, was invited to give a lecture on the changing of Chinese traditional painting in post-war Taiwan.

Prof. Liu Kuang Neng, retired professor from the Department of French at National Central University in Taiwan, was invited to give a lecture to share the two films by the famous Taiwanese movie directors Ang Lee, and Hou Hsiao-hsien.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by University of Macau to give a public lecture on “The Relevance of History? Reflections on the Case of Modern Chinese Disciplinarity from the University of Macau （所為何事？從澳大看近代中國歷史學的來龍與去脈）”. In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung introduces the ownership of an ancient civilization–the founding of modern disciplinary humanities with national character, the “Culture Circle of the Han-Chinese Script”–East-Asian Stake-Holders of “Chineseness”, Chinese academic during the Cold War–Hong Kong and Taiwan as alternatives, and the “National” and “Non-national” Chinese Civilization–from Diasporic and Sinological Perspectives.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by the Department of American Studies, Brown University to give a public lecture on “The Discovery of American Ginseng: A Case Study in Historical Anthropology and Medical Humanities”. In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung uses the case of American Ginseng to show how new economic and pharmaceutical (even epistemological) possibilities were thrown open with the coming of the “maritime” age that move across borderlands and tested the frontiers of knowledge and frontiers of trade. She also explains that the case is chosen to help us reflect upon the novel, outlandish character that maritime/global history turns out to be in the longue durée of the unfolding of man-made records.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University to give a public lecture on “Chinese History as National Humanities: Views from Taiwan and HK”. In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung accounts for the classical roots of this Chinese humanities in its own terms, gives a succinct institutional history of related disciplinary character in its modern embodiment of the country’s tertiary education and she also cites a few significant debates in that context so as to give people outside that tradition and history a sense of its going-ons in the modern era.

Prof. Li Yu-chen, Graduate Institute of Religious Studies at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, was invited to give a lecture on the females vowing as nuns and the formation of community identity of Buddhist nuns in post-war Taiwan.

Prof. Lee Cheuk-yin, Department of Chinese Studies at National University of Singapore, was invited to give a lecture on the changing religious landscape in Singapore with the faculties and students of CUHK.

The conference focused on the changing sense of “belonging” during the Cold War period in China and other regions. It brought together foremost scholars from different fields and areas, including Prof Hsiung Ping-chen from The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Prof Cao Shuji from Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Prof Shen Kui-yi from The University of California, San Diego; Prof Mayfair Yang from The University of California, Santa Barbara. The conference synthesizes existing research to expand to additional stimulating topics on the implication of a Cold War in Greater China region on issues like land reform, art, politics and religion of the cold war period. Papers on visual arts, film, academic institutions, and public health represent newer studies that draw people’s attention in particular. This set of articles are under revision for publication.

> Venue: Conference Room, 2/F, Art Museum East Wing, Institute of Chinese Studies, CUHK
> Organizer: Research Institute for the Humanities, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
> Co-organizer: The Department of History, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
> Sponsors: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, “Focusing on Taiwan: Health, Peace, Memory” Project
> Conference Summary Report (by Dr. Adam Cathcart): Report

The Humanities are performed not only in lectures, texts, seminars, and classrooms, but also in theatres, concerts, festivals, electronic and networked media, and other sites of intellectual and cultural activity and exchange. But it might also be said that the Humanities are ‘performed’ in a wider field that encompasses social struggles, the machinations and mediated rhetoric of politics, in hospital emergency rooms and police stations, or in global financial markets: places in which subject-object relationships dissolve into one another, or where artistic practices become a kind of performed hermeneutics.

Proudly hosted by the Research Institute for the Humanities at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the first CHCI Annual Meeting to be held in Asia with the theme “Performative Humanities” will explore these emerging issues, the ways in which they are transforming scholarly practice and the landscape of the Humanities, and their regional/global inflections.

Our program will feature leading scholars and filmmaker — including a talk by world-renowned Director Tsai Ming-liang — organizational leaders from Asia and beyond, workshops, and opportunities for stimulating interaction with peers from CHCI’s increasingly global membership, including meetings of our member groups and Networks. The city of Hong Kong and the New Territories, with their complex social and cultural histories, will themselves feature in the program in the form of historic meeting venues, culinary experiences, musical performances, poetry readings, and opportunities to engage with the sights and sounds of this incredible city.

In addition, a full morning will be devoted to presentations by scholars from five continents who are participating in CHCI’s Humanities for the Environment and Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging projects. Generously funded by a major, multi-year grant from the A.W. Mellon Foundation, these pilot projects are part of a developing program that will demonstrate the ways in which we might leverage the collective strength of CHCI’s international networks to explore exciting new forms of multi-institutional collaboration. Our over-arching goal in this project is to create models for future CHCI member-driven programs, and we will be devoting time to the work of our project groups in all upcoming Annual Meetings through the life of the grant.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by National Taiwan University to give a public lecture on “行行重行行：全球視野下之臺灣健康與人文之旅 (And Yet Miles to Go: Taiwan Health and Humanities in Global Perspective)”.

> Venue: Conference Room, 2/F, Art Museum East Wing, Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
> Organizer: Taiwan Research Center, Research Institute for the Humanities, CUHK
> Co-Organizers: Center for the Comparative Study of Antiquity, Research Institute for the Humanities,CUHK National Cheng Kung University
> Sponsors: Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, Fo Guang Vihara of Hong Kong, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by Free University of Berlin to give a public lecture on “Compare So As to Connect: The Mirror Effect of Europe and Asia”.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by “Forum for the Asia in the Humanities/Humanities in Asia Initiative”, UCLA to give a public lecture on “Humanities over the Longue Durée: The Case of Modern China”. In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung accounts for the classical roots of this Chinese humanities in its own terms, gives a succinct institutional history of related disciplinary character in its modern embodiment of the country’s tertiary education and she also cites a few significant debates in that context so as to give people outside that tradition and history a sense of its going-ons in the modern era.

Prof. Bin Wong, Director of the Asian Institute, UCLA, gave a speech on “Contemporary Consequences of Path Dependent Changes in Relations of Political Authority and Religion in China and Europe: A Millennial Perspective on Problems of Political Belongings”. In the lecture, Prof. Wong examined the roles of religion and secular ideas and institutions in creating commitments of political belonging in four world regions—China, Europe, Middle East, the United States by a comparative approach.

Prof. Richard von Glahn presented a lecture on “Song Coin and Monetary Circulation in Maritime East Asia, 1200–1700” at the RIH of CUHK, for a deeper investigation on the monetary and economic factors which had both bought this region together as well as set societies apart from centuries back.

As a long standing member of the CHCI, RIH will join the Annual and Board Meeting of the CHCI that will be held, from 25 to 27 April 2013, at the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. This year’s theme is focused on “Humanities, Publics, and the State” where allowing all members and organizations to explore the philosophical, political, and pragmatic dimensions of public humanities in the context both of current challenges to the university and emerging responses. Major speakers include Christopher Newfield (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Helen Small (Oxford University).

Followed by a welcoming decision made by the CHCI International Advisory Board Meeting in 2012 at Oxford that CUHK will be the next host in 2014, our Director is going to present a preliminary program of the 2014 Annual Meeting and Board Meeting to all CHCI members coming from over 20 countries. CUHK and our Institute are honored to be the host of this “inaugural” CHCI Annual and Board Meeting in Asia. This inaugural event does not merely mark a major milestone for the development and extended network of CHCI in Asia, but to uplift and nourish CUHK’s collaborative research development in Humanities at an international level.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by The Center for the Humanities, Washington University, St Louis to given a public lecture on the topic “Reflections on Children’s Studies: The Perspective from Chinese History.” Through comparative and discursive approach, Prof. Hsiung introduces the basic source materials, research methods, as well as the multi-disciplinary nature of the study of children and childhood in Chinese history.

Prof Chiang Tung-liang, former Director of the College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, is currently the External Humanities Fellow of our Institute, has been invited to deliver a talk related to Health Insurance in Taiwan (臺灣為什麼會有全民健保？ – 意義與啓示) co-organized by the Taiwan Research Centre and our Institute. In this lecture, Prof Chiang shares his views on Health Insurance in Taiwan, its rationale behind, impact and inspiration. Prof Fok Tai Fai, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (PVC) of CUHK, former Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, also joined the lecture who has actively engaged to share his views on the topic with the speaker and the students.

Prof Robert Lee from the American Studies of the Brown University has been invited to deliver a talk on “Carving History on Our Backs”: Violence, Memory and the History of Chinese Workingmen in America organized by our Institute. In this lecture, Prof Lee shares three “hidden transcripts”, a Taoist temple in northern California, a Hongmen initiation catechism, and a scripture dedicated to Guandi to reconstruct a subaltern narrative of social conflict that extended from Guangdong to California in the mid-19th Century. Temple inscriptions, secret society ritual, and the practices of martial arts inscribed a collective memory of violence and shaped an alternative diaspora imaginary. Prof To Wing Kai, a visiting scholar at the Department of History, CUHK, serves as the moderator who also shares his views on the topic with the audience.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, has been invited by Tan Kah Kee College, Xiamen University to give a public lecture on “中國兒童史的開拓與前景：兼及國際「新人文」之發展”. In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung does not only share her own decades of research experience and future research plan in Childhood History with the faculties and students of Xiamen University, she also makes an illustrious address on the global development of humanities subjects.

Dr Huang Ko-wu, Director of Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica has been invited to deliver a talk on靈學與近代中國的知識轉型:民初知識分子對科學、宗教與迷信的再思co-organized by our Institute and the Department of History, CUHK. In this lecture, Dr Huang raises discussions on pneumatology including spirits, mental communication etc., process of knowledge transfer of contemporary China and secularization.

In this lecture, Prof. Huang Ko-wu, director of IMH, AS, explained leading intellectuals’ view on pneumatology during the early 20th century, including their ideas on spirits, mental communication and their implications.

Our Director, Prof Hsiung Ping-chen, was also invited by the Asia Institute of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the UCLA Dean of Humanities to give a lecture at the “Asia inthe Humanities/Humanities in Asia Inaugural Lecture” which brings together scholars from the fields of history, literature, religion, and the arts working across time periods and Asian spaces to develop new frames of research and pedagogy. Presenting on “Regional Logic vs Global Humanities: Where to and from Here?”, Prof Hsiung tries to examine the disciplinarity of regional studies vs interdisciplinary humanities from the 19th Century until recently and to invite opportunities for deepening collaboration.

Our Director, Prof Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by Prof Bin Wong, the Director of the Asia Institute and a Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to give a lecture on the topic “Compassion and Charitable Activities in Late Imperial China: Two Examples”.

With the purpose of enhancing excellence in the humanities through the promotion of co-operation among Asian universities and research institutes, the Asian New Humanities Net (ANHN) serves as a regional network that shares resources of humanities in Asia. Since its establishment in 2004, the ANHN has been serving as an evolving platform that incubates and nurtures the development of humanities in Asia. The ANHN has successfully organized nine meetings in the past seven years, attracting participants from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, as well as North America and Europe. Following the success in organizing the 8th Annual Meeting, RIH had served as the secretariat of the 9th ANHN Annual Meeting, which was hosted by the Shanghai Jiaotong University from 15 to 17 October 2011, with the theme “Towards the Humanities; Social Transformation and Value Reconstruction”. With our Vice-Chancellor, Prof Joseph Sung, presided over the opening, the 9th ANHN Annual Meeting was very well received with participation of an ever larger group of Asian Humanities leaders.

As the secretariat of ANHN, RIH will continue to facilitate the 10th Annual Meeting organized by the College of Liberal Arts, the National Cheng Kung University from 2 to 4 November 2012, with “Asian Humanities and Higher Education in the 21st Century” as the theme of the year.

“Similarities and Differences- The diversified development of Min-yue culture in Taiwan and Hong Kong” (「相似與差異──閩粵到臺港的多元文化發展比較」) is an inter-disciplinary and comparative symposium to be organized by the Min-nan Cultural Studies Centre of National Ch’ang Kung University – one of our strategic partners in Taiwan, and the Taiwan Research Centre of CUHK from 31st October to 1st November, 2012. It aims to invite leading scholars in the fields to reflect upon the dynamics between Min-nan and Cantonese culture in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and to investigate the similarities and differences between the two prominent cultures in Southern China. The focuses of the symposium consist of architecture, religion, drama and literature. Prof Hoyan Hang Fung from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Prof Chang Ping Hung from the Department of Architecture, Prof. Zhou Jin from the Department of Fine Arts and Prof. He Xi from the Department of History of CUHK will join this symposium.

As a substantiation of the Health and Humanities initiative started by the Faculty of Social Science, Faculty of Medicine, the School of Public Health and the Nethersole School of Nursing of CUHK, the 2nd Health and Humanities Symposium will be held at the National Taiwan University from 29 to 30 October 2012. Jointly organized by RIH and the College of Public Health of the National Taiwan University, the Symposium is titled “To Protect Life: Culture, Society, and Health”; and the Vice-Chancellor Prof Joseph Sung has agreed to give a keynote speech at the Symposium. Also, a roundtable will be followed to further deepen the discussion and exchanges on the initiative.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited to give a keynote speech at the Joint Symposium on Medicine and History on “健康﹑人文﹑千古巡禮：中國幼科之例.” Prof. Hsiung traces the history of Chinese pediatrics and explains how it had developed quickly during late imperial China.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the School of Medicine to give a lecture on “生醫路上之會友與輔仁” to their students. By referring to the history of Fu-Jen, Prof Hsiung explains the roots and current syllabus of medical humanities in FJCU. Then, she introduces the current development of medical humanities in western universities.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the College of Medicine to give a lecture on “驀然回首” to all the students in the College of Medicine (6 departments). Not only reviewing her past experience in medical humanities, Prof. Hsiung points out the new path for the reformation of medical education.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the Research Center for the Humanities and the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University to give a lecture on “Saving the Children: Pediatrics in Late Imperial China and Its Public Health Implication.” With reference to texts and graphics of Chinese pediatrics and newborn care, Prof. Hsiung examines the development and popularization of children’s care in late imperial China.

To facilitate academic exchanges on local studies between Hong Kong and Taiwan, Leung Po Chuen Research Centre for Hong Kong History and Humanities (LPC), one of our member centres, and our Institute will host a delegation visit of the National Central University from Taiwan. The visiting scholars will not only visit the Government Record Service, the governmental department which plays a key role in the management of recorded information for the Hong Kong SAR, but attend a seminar with the main topic on “Research experience in Hong Kong history”, which will be held at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The delegation of Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU) is aimed at increasing the academic exchange of CUHK and SJTU. The delegation planned to share with SJTU the postgraduate program and general education of CUHK and also to develop collaboration of the two universities on Arts and Social Sciences, History, and especially the enhancement of the status of Chinese in academics.

Hosted by the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, the Academic Conference on Body and Cognition will be held from 31 August to 2 September in Taipei. Our Director, Prof Hsiung Ping Chen, Prof Gordon Mathews from the Department of Anthropology, Prof Huso Yi from the Jocky Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, Prof Desmond Hui and Prof Katrien Jacobs from the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Prof Saulius Geniusas from the Department of Philosophy, as well as Prof Poo Mu Chou from the Department of History of our University will be presenting at the Conference, as so to bring CUHK to renowned experts of bodily feelings and cognition in both Hong Kong and Taiwan for future closer professional collaboration.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences at NJU to give a lecture on “童年史新探：嬰戲與幼醫.” Prof. Hsiung introduces the new paths of studies in Chinese Childhood History with two examples – 1) the paintings of playing children and 2) the case of Dr. Hsü Yü-ho, a local pediatrician in Hui-chou during Ch’ien-lung period (Ch’ing Dynasty).

As the most important international organization for the humanities, the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) serves as a network that circulates information and best practices related to the organizational and management dimensions of humanities centers and institutes. With the objective to enhance collaboration and build up partnership with regional leaders, the CHCI Advisory Board moves about the world as a tradition. Further to the previous board meeting held from 2 to 6 November 2011 at CUHK, which was indeed the first CHCI board meeting in Asia, RIH participated in the 2012 CHCI Annual and Board Meeting at Australian National University from 11 to 16 June. In addition to the exchanges on the CHCI member initiatives, namely the Digital Humanities Initiatives, the Humanities for the Environment Initiatives and the Public Humanities Initiatives, the meeting also facilitated presentations by co-conveners of the CHCI Program Planning Projects, including Humanities for the Environment, Integrative Graduate Humanities Education & Research Training (IGHERT), Medical Humanities, as well as Religion, Secularism, and Political Belonging. RIH will also join the 2013 CHCI Annual Meeting, titled “The Humanities and the State”, which is scheduled to be held at the University of Kansas, Lawrence from 24 to 27 April 2013, to explore the philosophical, political, and pragmatic dimensions of public humanities in the context both of current challenges to the university and emerging responses.

Our Director, Prof Hsiung Ping-chen, met the delegation led by Prof John Fisher, Deputy Vice-Chancellor from the University of Leeds in June at the University to develop long-term fruitful philosophical collaboration. Possibilities of establishing research partnership in areas including English/Linguistics, Theology and Religious Studies, History, inter-disciplinary Applied Ethics, Translation and Arts were also explored.

In addition, our University has signed an agreement with the University of Leeds to fasten joint research collaborations on Health and Humanities through staff and student mobility programs, including the Faculty Exchange Program and the PhD Student Exchange Program. It is believed that these programs would not only foster stronger ties between faculty members of CUHK and the University of Leads for academic and research exchange, and develop institutional level partnership between the two universities, but also increase the visibility of CUHK as a world-class research university through student mobility.

In May, our Director, Prof Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the Center for Humanities and Medicine, The University of Hong Kong to give a lecture at the “Child Health and Humanitarian Emergencies” Conference. The conference aimed at connecting the current practices of children protection/childhood with the historical perspectives and humanitarian concern. It also evaluated how child health and “humanitarian” intervention were elaborated; and the way both helped shape the modern definitions of “childhood”. Presenting on “The Humanitarian Implications of Chinese Childhood History”, Prof Hsiung shared her insightful views on the concepts of humanistic concern in child health in the early-modern time.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited to give a keynote speech at “全國公私立醫學校院－醫學系學制改革與課程規劃研討會” on “The Convergence of Parted Paths.” Prof. Hsiung shares her own experience on Medical Humanities with the representatives of the medical colleges in Taiwan universities and uses it as an example to explain how we could cross the border of arts and sciences.

Sharing the same goal of achieving research and education advancement in health and humanities, our Director, Prof Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the College of Medicine of the National Cheng Kung University to meet the delegates from the 12 medical schools in Taiwan in May. During the symposium and the roundtable discussion, Prof Hsiung shared her views and expertise with the delegates on the planning of the new medical curricula in Taiwan. Inspired by the intellectual exchange, it is believed that both NCKU and CUHK could work towards a comprehensive medical curriculum that highlights cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary integration.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the Medical College at National Cheng Kung University to give a lecture on “驚知己於千古.” In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung shares her own research result on the formation and development of traditional Chinese pediatrics with the medical students in NCKU.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the University of Oregon to give the concluding address at the University of Oregon Asian Studies Program 70th Anniversary Conference on “Is China the “Area” or the “Global Context”? Perspective from Hong Kong and Taiwan.” Responding to the presentation of Prof. Prasenjit Duara’s keynote speech, Prof. Hsiung expounds the future development of Asia and Area Studies by sharing her experience in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Given the fact that it is of increasing importance to adopt a comparative perspective to reveal the interconnectedness of world history and humanities in the study of History, RIH sponsored the Centre for the Comparative Study of Antiquity to organize the “Conference on Women, Law and Belief in Ancient and Medieval China” in May. The conference explored the issue of women’s role and status in the area of law and belief in early and Medieval China. It was well received among postgraduate students and young faculties in Hong Kong, Mainland China and Taiwan, especially those who were interested in conducting research in the area of ancient history with a comparative perspective.

Our Director, Prof. Hsiung Ping-chen, was invited by the Simpson Center for the Humanities and the Department of History at the University of Washington, Seattle to give a lecture on “The Power of Voiceless: Further Thoughts on the Studies of Chinese Childhood History.” In this lecture, Prof. Hsiung reviews the current studies on Chinese Childhood History and shares her own research experience on “cricket” as related to Chinese Childhood History.

A visit to the States was arranged in April and May to consolidate the connection of CUHK with renowned universities and humanities institutions there. During the trip, our Director, Prof Hsiung Ping-chen, paid a visit to the Asia Institute of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), our MOU signing partner, to substantiate collaborating projects and programs. She also met with scholars from the California Institute of Technology, Hsi Lai Temple, the University of the West and the University California, San Diego (UCSD) to establish academic network and initiate possible research collaboration in humanities subjects.

Prof Hsiung ended her trip to the States by giving a lecture titled “The Power of the Voiceless: Further Thoughts on the Studies of Chinese Childhood History” in the Chinese Department and Simpson Center for the Humanities at The University of Washington. She also presented a paper titled “Is China the ‘Area’ or the ‘Global Context’? Perspectives from Hong Kong and Taiwan” at the 70th Anniversary Conference of the University of Oregon Asian Studies Program titled “Area Studies in Global Context: The “Place” of Asia” for intellectual exchange.

Echoing to the arousing public concern in the environmental protection issue, RIH jointly organized the “Film and Environment Symposium” with the Institute of Environment, Energy and Sustainability (IEES) in April. Prof David Chen Yong-qin, Chairman of the Department of Geography and Resource Management, Prof Liao Hsien-hao, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, National Taiwan University, Prof Michelle Bloom, Director of Comparative Literature, University of California, Riverside and Prof Lin Wen-chi, Department of English, National Central University were invited to speak at the symposium to explore the interaction between human and the natural world from the geographical and cultural perspectives. Uncovering the issue from an inter-disciplinary viewpoint, the symposium offered a critical analysis to the changing relation of people to the natural environment over the past few decades.

Under the collaboration of CUHK and the National Central University, Taiwan, the bilateral research centres of Taiwan Research Centre and Hong Kong Research Centre were established on 11 and 23 April 2012 respective. The newly founded Taiwan Research Centre strives to further the bondage of CUHK with Taiwan universities, and foster bilateral arts and humanistic studies. The centre would utilize the strength of CUHK to co-ordinate interdisciplinary research on Taiwan, while collaborate with the Hong Kong Research Centre at the National Central University and other academic institutions in Taiwan for academic exchange. Ongoing research topics include HK- Taiwan literature, history, philosophy, cultural and film studies. The centre will also explore and develop broader bilateral studies such as cultural management, cultural heritage conservation, urban regeneration, cultural development policy and cultural creative industries. The forerunner of the Centre’s vivacious academic events includes ‘Taiwan Film and Culture Symposium’ held on 11 April, with Prof Michelle Bloom from the University of California, Riverside, Prof Liao Hsien-hao from the National Taiwan University, and Prof Lin Wen-chi from the National Central University as the speakers.

Aimed at seeking the possibility of collaboration with the Brown University in the field of humanities and social sciences, and introducing American Studies to CUHK students, Prof Robert Lee from the Brown University was invited to visit our University in end-March. Not only having visited the History Department and SHH College of CUHK, Prof Lee had also provided valuable advices and information to the faculties of CUHK, and shared his precious experience with prospective students who were interested in furthering their academic career in American Studies. Planned to develop a summer program in Chinese-American history under the CUHK-Brown scheme, Lee will be returning with a visiting fellowship next year, and working with S. H. Ho and RIH, hosting on a Fulbright fellowship.

In mid-March, Prof Michael Steinberg from the Brown University was invited to launch a lecture titled “Provincializing European Opera” at our University. The lecture examined a selected series of celebrated European operas in their respective significance in historical, cultural and political evolution. Prof Steinberg’s galvanizing inter-disciplinary study of the western opera was delivered with the wish to illuminate the study of Chinese opera at our University. The event also featured Kunqu performances which initiated a cultural exchange of the art of the West and the East at CUHK, with the interest to develop possibly a summer program in comparative operatic musicology, with potential support from the CCK Foundation.

As the Vice- President of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the Research Fellow of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy of the Academic Sinica, Prof Wang Ayling was invited to conduct a lecture at our University on “Mission and Vision: The Role of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation in an Age of Globalization” and “”Canonicity” and “Modernity”: New Horizons for the Development of the Contemporary Taiwan Beijing Opera and Its Cultural Significance (「經典性」與「現代性」──論當代臺灣京劇發展之美學新視野與其文化意涵)” in March. The lecture received positive feedback from our audience, especially the MA in Cultural Management students. The Institute had benefited from Prof Wang not only her insightful view on tradition Chinese opera, but also her expertise in literature critique and theory.

Specializing in literature critique and aesthetics, Prof Tai Ching-hsien from the National Sun Yat-Sen University gave a lecture on 「劉勰《文心雕龍》之文學本質論及其玄學基礎」 “Liu Xie’s Aesthetics of Literature and Its Philosophical Foundation” at our University in March. Our faculty members and students had benefited enormously from his scholarship and academic insights on Chinese literature. At the same time, academic exchange between the National Sun-Yat Sen University and CUHK had been facilitated.

To nurture the study of Humanist Humanities and Buddhism at CUHK, Prof Yu Chun-fang from the Columbia University was invited to give two talks, namely “A Study of Contemporary Buddhist Nuns in Taiwan” and “觀音信仰與漢傳佛教” in March. Prof Yu is a famed scholar in the history of Chinese Buddhist thoughts and institutions, as well as Buddhists rituals and practice. Her preeminent methodology in the study of contemporary religious practice had undoubtedly invigorated the study of culture and religion of our fellow scholars.

Jointly invited by the Department of Linguistics and Modern Language, the English Language Teaching Unit and RIH, Prof Maria Zlateva, a scholar from the Boston University, conducted a lecture titled “Teaching Grammar in Context: The Case for Pedagogical Grammars” in March. The lecture discussed the role of Pedagogical Grammar (PG) in language teaching in various academic settings, using the experiences of an applied linguist, L2 language teacher, teacher educator, and program administrator. Definitions and conceptualizations of PG were reviewed in order to demystify the still evolving notion of PG and to establish a working base that encompassed content, pedagogy, and learning perspectives. Fresh orientations to the system of grammar (such as Functional Grammar, Action Grammar, Relevance Theory) were presented to show how applied linguistics research could inform grammar teaching to develop an account of language that reflected the way people actually learn and use it. This led to the rationale for teaching grammar in context, using a task-based approach which aimed to cultivate linguistic accuracy along with meaningful and appropriate use of grammar structures. The presentation provided examples of classroom practices and ended with a summary of implications for curricular design, teacher training, and further research.

To strength the academic network of CUHK with universities in UK in the study of Humanities, Prof Rosemary O’Day from the Open University, UK was invited to conduct a lecture titled “Matchmaking and Moneymaking in a Patronage Society” at our University in February. In the lecture, Prof O’Day demonstrated her caliber in investigating the intriguing relationship between marriage and money making in Gregorian England, which enacted a paragon not only for CUHK, but also Humanities research in domestic and social history.

Apart from the lecture on “Marriage, Family and Sexuality in the Age of Augustus”, Prof Robert Gurval, a scholar of antiquity from the University of California UCLA, was invited to lead a symposium titled “Famous Women in History” at the University in late February. The symposium also featured two renowned professors in CUHK, Prof Poo Mu-Chou and Prof Lee Ou-fan. Together with Prof Gurval, the three embarked an exciting and comparative intellectual discussion on the famous women in the antiquity, encompassing Hatshepsut from Egypt, Agrippina from Rome and Cixi from China, exerting new vigor in the traditional historical studies which had been dominated by men in power and mono-perspective narration.

With the aims to promote interest and encourage students to engage in more serious studies of Western Classical culture, RIH sponsored the Center for the Comparative Study of Antiquity to invite Prof Robert Gurval, an Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of California (UCLA), to lead a lecture titled “Marriage, Family and Sexuality in the Age of Augustus” at the University. The lecture not only shed light on the study of Antiquity from the gender perspective, but also facilitated academic exchange between UCLA and CUHK.

To further strengthen the network with Taiwan universities in the study of Humanities, our Director, Prof Hsiung Ping-chen, visited the Nation Taiwan University, the National Central University, the Minister of Education of Taiwan, the CCK Foundation, the Academia Sinica, the CUHK Alumni Association of Taiwan, as well as the National Science Council during her academic trips to Taiwan in February and March 2012. The trips also served the purpose of exploring new collaboration opportunities between Taiwan academy and CUHK.

To arouse students’ interest and encourage their engagement in the study of Archaeology, Prof Lather von Faulkenhausen, Associate Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA was invited to visit our University in January. Serving as the UCLA’s representative for the International Archaeological Field School at Yangguanzhai (Shaanxi), the research of Prof Faulkenhausen concerns the archaeology of Bronze Age China. During his stay at our University, Prof Faulkenhausen not only had a sharing session with our postgraduate students, but also led a field trip at Wong Tei Tung for our Archaeology students for academic exchange.