Media

HKU to hold the 9th Joseph Needham Memorial Lecture

04 Dec 2014

 

The Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, in association with the East Asian Society of the History of Science, will host the 9th Joseph Needham Memorial Lecture on December 9, 2014 (Tuesday). The speaker this year is Francesca Bray, Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Social and Political Science of the University of Edinburgh. The title of her talk is ‘“Men Plough, Women Weave”: Joseph Needham, Feminism and the History of Science and Technology in China”’.

Joseph Needham (1900-1995) was a professor of chemistry in Cambridge University. While he was visiting China in the 1940s he came into contact with a significant amount of historical documents regarding Chinese science and technology as well as a number of promising young scholars, in the process igniting his passion in the history of science and technology in China. His main question, now known as the “Needham Question”, asks “why modern science had not developed in Chinese civilization but only in Europe given China’s remarkable scientific achievements before the 15th century”. This had always been his focus during his decades of research on the history of science and technology in China.

During his career Joseph Needham established the institute now named after him at Cambridge, in the process building an international team of experts who studied various facets of the history of Chinese science and technology. Since 1945, the institute has published the encyclopedic Science and Civilisation in China, now comprising almost thirty volumes, which helped define and lead this field of study for six decades.

The speaker, Professor Francesca Bray, is visiting this semester at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Hong Kong. She was responsible for the volume on agriculture in Science and Civilisation in China, in which she explained the central role of rice cultivation techniques in Chinese civilisation. In recent years she has approached the question of technological and cultural development through the lens of gender, thus providing new ways to address the “Needham Question.”

Professor Mei Jianjun was appointed as the director of the Needham Research Institute last year. Having received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in archaeology, Professor Mei tries to push the boundaries for addressing Chinese technology through the study of bronze casting methods in ancient China.

Professor Angela K. C. Leung, the director of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the Joseph Needham-Philip Mao Professor in Chinese History, Science & Civilization, is currently in the process of building an international team of scholars to pursue a large scale research project in understanding how technology affects the development of East Asian societies in the modern and contemporary periods. The aim of this project is to define technology’s indispensable role in material culture, institutional development, value formation, and the unique ways in which East Asian societies engage with technology in everyday life.

The details of the talk are as follows:
Date: December 9, 2014 (Tuesday)
Time: 4:30 pm
Location: Social Sciences Chamber, 11/F, the Jockey Club Tower, the University of Hong Kong
Language: English
Registration website: www.hkihss.hku.hk/francesca

If members of the media would like to interview Professors Francesca Bray, Mei Jianjun, or Angela Leung, please contact Ms. Yvonne Chan at 852-3917-5901 or ihss@hku.hk.

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In conjunction with the Joseph Needham Memorial Lecture, the East Asian Society of the History of Science will hold a lecture for students and teachers of secondary schools with Professor Mei Jianjun as the speaker. The title of the talk is “Challenge with Curiosity: Joseph Needham and his Intellectual Heritage”. The Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences is the sponsor of this talk.

Date: December 8, 2014 (Monday)
Time: 5:00 pm
Location: Queen’s College School Hall, 120 Causeway Rd, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong
Language: English
Registration and inquiries: Please contact Ms. Annie Kwan via email at akwan@hku.hk.