Welcome Back!

Hope you all had a wonderful summer and wish you a successful academic year ahead!

Our warmest welcome to all new students of the Department of History!

Course Enrolments

Students who wish to change their 2025-26 First Term course enrolments are reminded to do so via the CUSIS during the following specified add/drop periods:

Undergraduate programme: Between 8:30pm on 8 September 2025 and 8:30pm on 14 September 2025
Postgraduate programmes: Between 10am on 1 September 2025 and 5:30pm on 15 September 2025/p>

Congratulations to our Teaching Staff Awarded Research Funds

Our Department continued to succeed in the recent research funding exercises. We would like to extend our congratulations to our distinguished teaching staff members who were successful in securing the grants.

 
RGC General Research Fund 2025-26

Direct Grant for Research 2024-25 (2nd Round)

Faculty Conference Support 2024-25

Congratulations to Dr. FOK Yeung Yeung for Receiving the SCGE Exemplary Teaching Award in General Education 2024

The Department extends its heartfelt congratulations to Dr. FOK Yeung Yeung for receiving the SCGE Exemplary Teaching Award in General Education 2024. This award recognises his outstanding teaching and dedication to students, as well as his effort in enhancing the learning experience through general education, one of the University’s core values.

Dr. FOK believes that the key to General Education lies in its “generality”, in crossing the limitations of modern academic disciplines, and in building a holistic yet pluralistic view of the values of society and the world in which we live. General Education provides our students with diversified and coherent knowledge and, more importantly, the ability to deal with practical problems.

PhD Graduate TIAN Fang Awarded the CUHK Young Scholars Thesis Award 2024

We are very pleased to announce that our PhD graduate TIAN Fang has received the CUHK Young Scholars Thesis Award 2024 for her research entitled “Resources, Power and Capital: A Study on Baojin Company in the Local Landscape of Modern Shanxi (1896-1930)”. Offered by the Graduate School of CUHK, Young Scholars Thesis Award aims to recognize the outstanding doctoral theses written by research doctoral graduates.

Dr. TIAN’s study discusses how the establishment of a large-scale industrial enterprise was possible in the context of changes in the local landscape of Shanxi from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China.

Best Teaching Assistant Award 2024-25

To encourage quality teaching and recognize outstanding research postgraduate students serving as teaching assistant, the Department launched the Best Teaching Assistant Award in 2023-24. Students below received the award in 2024-25:

2024-25 Term 1 GUIANG Francisco Jayme Paolo (MPhil)
2024-25 Term 2 WATERHOUSE Isaac Joseph (MPhil)

Congratulations to all the prize winners!

Reappointment

Prof. Ian MORLEY has been reappointed as Professor with effect from 1 August 2025.

New Appointments

We extend our welcome to Prof. TSUI Kai Hin Brian and Dr. WANG Yiqiao, who joined the Department of History as Associate Professor and Assistant Lecturer respectively on 1 August 2025.

Prof. TSUI Kai Hin Brian, gained his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Hong Kong. He received his M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in East Asian Languages and Culture from Columbia University. Before joining the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he was an Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Prof. TSUI will teach HIST2100 China Today and HIST2200 Revolution and Modernization in Twentieth-Century China in Term 2.

Dr. WANG Yiqiao gained her M.Phil. degree from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and received her Ph.D. in History from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She was a Part-time Lecturer at the Hong Kong Baptist University before joining CUHK. Dr. WANG will teach UGEA2230H Introduction to Transformation in Chinese History in Term 1; HIST2501 Hong Kong History in the Field in both Term 1 and Term 2; UGED2233B Women and Children in Chinese History in Term 2; and UGEC2041 History of Women in Modern China in Summer Term.

Resignation

Prof. POON Shuk Wah left the Department on 15 July 2025. We would like to extend our appreciation to Prof. POON for her contributions to the Department of History.

Sabbatical Leave

Prof. Ian MORLEY, Prof. James MORTON and Prof. TSE Wai Kit Wicky will be on sabbatical leave in Term 1 of 2025-26. The details are as follows:

• Ian MORLEY (6 October 2025 to 7 December 2025)
• James MORTON (1 September 2025 to 6 December 2025)
• TSE Wai Kit Wicky (1 September 2025 to 31 December 2025)

Recapping the “Workshops for the First-Year RPg Students 2024-25” held on 11 April 2025

The “Workshops for the First Year RPg Students 2024-25” were satisfactorily concluded on 11 April 2025. The Workshops offered an interactive platform for the Department’s research postgraduate students to exchange and discuss their research findings.

Recapping the World History Seminar “Global Religious Change and Patterns of Ruler Conversion, 1450-1850” on 22 April 2025

Prof. Alan STRATHERN from the University of Oxford was invited to give an online talk on the topic of “Global Religious Change and Patterns of Ruler Conversion, 1450-1850” based on his monographs Converting Rulers: Global Patterns 1450-1850 (2024) and Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History (2019). Through comparative global history methodology, Prof. STRATHERN investigated the reasons certain religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, came to dominate the world’s religious landscape. He distinguished between two concepts, immanentism and transcendentalism. The first refers to religious practices centred on immediate needs through connections with meta-persons like ancestors and deities, while the latter describes the religions that focus on salvation and universal ethical systems. By sharing contrasting case studies of Hawaii in the early 1800s and Thailand in the 1680s, Strathern illustrated how the two concepts worked for understanding conversion dynamics across different societies. He also highlighted how ruler conversions often followed pragmatic, empirical considerations rather than purely theological reasoning, exemplified by the roles religious specialists played in these transitions.

Recapping the “1st Annual Graduate Student International Colloquium: Trends, Issues, and Problems in Southeast Asian Historical Scholarship” held on 8 May 2025

On 8 May 2025, the 1st Annual Graduate Student International Colloquium with the theme “Trends, Issues, and Problems” was held via Zoom. Twenty-three presenters from different countries shared their research and had engaging discussions on various topics on Southeast Asian historiography. Four panels discussed themes such as material and embodied histories, decolonizing knowledge, histories from the margins, and entangled encounters while the round table discussion focused on public histories and interdisciplinary possibilities.

The colloquium conveners were composed of our research postgraduate students, Ms. Ma. Donna REBONG, Ms. Mar Lorence TICAO and Mr. Francisco Jayme GUIANG. They also served as panel chairs together with Ms. Aileen RONDILLA and Mr. Josef Adriel DE GUZMAN from the Department of Anthropology. Prof. Ian MORLEY provided supervision and gave the welcoming remarks during the event.

Recapping the Academic Seminar “The Cultural Revolution from the Perspective of Local Mass Movements Studies” on 8 May 2025

Prof. DONG Guoqiang from the Department of History of Fudan University, delivered an academic seminar entitled “The Cultural Revolution from the Perspective of Local Mass Movement Studies” on 8 May 2025.

Prof. DONG provided an in-depth interpretation of “Factional Conflicts” between two groups of cadres and the masses during the “Cultural Revolution”, examining how differences in understanding the Central Government’s “ambiguous” policies led to these conflicts and their subsequent developments. Under the framework of “Unified Party Leadership System” after 1949, the “Cultural Revolution” began with a series of bottom-up social and political movements in the latter half of 1966. It initially emerged in the field of education, eventually evolving into a nationwide wave of rebellion and power seizure.

The speaker argued that either the “Opposition Party” nor the “Conservative Party” were opponents of the Chinese Communist Party regime, and thus the rational response of the majority was to closely follow the central government’s call. However, the cadre and the masses who participated in the movement in response to the call ultimately divided into different factions due to its ambiguous policies, leading to fractional conflicts.

Prof. DONG and Prof. WEI Angde believed that the factional conflicts during the “Cultural Revolution” stemmed from a series of complex political events in the early stages, including ambiguous concepts, inconsistent public opinion propaganda and behind-the-scenes interventions by the central government, as well as repeated policy fluctuations, which resulted in differing views among the masses and cadres regarding the leadership of their work units and local Party committees.

After the peak of military confrontation across the country from the summer of 1967 to the summer of 1968, although the central leaders intended to control the situation, they were reluctant to assume the responsibility for the ambiguity of the policy, leading to a continuous escalation of local violence. Unlike the mainstream public opinion during the “Cultural Revolution”, the restoration of local order was essentially a military dictatorship. Although the local order was gradually restored under strong suppression, the suppressed factions always hoped to leverage changes in the political situation to fight back. In the middle and later stages of the “Cultural Revolution”, as political crises at the top level of the central government persisted, local factional confrontation repeatedly flared up.

Prof. DONG concluded that through the study of local masses, the “Cultural Revolution” began in a sudden outburst, followed by prolonged unresolved local factional issues, and later resistance from cadres and the public towards the “Cultural Revolution” indicating a decline in the state’s mobilization and the control capabilities during the process. Throughout this period, military personnel and “old cadres” acted as “agents of the state”, ensuring that the power of the state remained present in local politics. The seminar enriched the audience’s understanding of the history of “Cultural Revolution” from a unique perspective, affirmed the measures taken after the “Cultural Revolution” such as Reform and Opening-Up, and inspired the audience to reflect on historical events in a multi-perspective way.

Recapping the “Commercial Activities in Archives” Workshop on 22 May 2025 and Visiting on 23 May 2025

On 22 May 2025, the Leung Po Chuen Research Centre for Hong Kong History and Humanities and the Government Records Service successfully organised the “Commercial Activities in Archives” Workshop in CUHK. The workshop featured opening addresses from Mr. SIU Wing Ho, the Director of Government Records Service and Prof. CHEUNG Sui Wai, the Chairman of Department of History, CUHK. Five specialists from different disciplines were invited to give lectures. The speakers presented the commercial activities and network of the 19th century through various commercial archives. Participants were eagerly asking questions and sharing their perspectives, which created a lively and inspiring atmosphere.

A group of 20 people visited the archives collections of the Government Records Service and the Swire Archives on 23 May 2025. This unique and exclusive experience allowed participants to understand the conservation and systematic storage of archives, and they also had the opportunity to touch the collections up close, which broadened their horizons.

Recapping the “1st Annual Graduate Student International Colloquium: Trends and Issues in Chinese Historical Scholarship” held on 13 June 2025

On 13 June 2025, the 1st Annual Graduate Student International Colloquium themed “Trends and Issues in Chinese Historical Scholarship” was held at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Eighteen speakers from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore shared their research on four topics relating to Hong Kong: Translocal and Comparative Lens, East Asia: The Question of Modernity and the Insights from Everyday Life, Historiography Revisited and Applied, and Late Imperial China: Different Perspectives. Prof. PUK Wing Kin, the Vice-Chairman of Department of History delivered the opening remarks, and our research postgraduate students, Mr. CHENG Kui Wa and Ms. XU Yijie, served as the colloquium conveners and panel chairs.

The colloquium offered a great opportunity for graduate students to share their research findings and promote the development of academic research.

Recapping the “Academic Exchange with Zhejiang University”

A group of 40 students and members from Department of History, Zhejiang University visited our Department on 27 June 2025. The group had a lively exchange with Prof. Prof. CHEUNG Sui Wai, Chairman, Prof. PUK Wing Kin, Vice-Chairman and our research postgraduate students through various lectures. The group also visited the Art Museum and University Library.

Academic Writing Workshop

For teachers and students who have information to share with the Department, please email your articles in both Chinese and English to chanfiona@cuhk.edu.hk by 4:00pm every Monday.