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“Networks and Interactions” graduate conference

Posted by: mchu in conference member presentations chinese history comparative history european history networks 7 years, 4 months ago

Team members Hilde De Weerdt, Julius Morche and Ming-kin Chu participated in the “Networks and Interactions” graduate conference at Leiden University (May 9-11, 2014). Hilde served as a discussant for the panel “Social and Economic Networks in Texts”, in which both Julius and Ming-kin as well as Silke Vanbeselaere (KU Leuven) presented papers. In his paper An Economic Model of Political Communication: Informational Networks in Venetian Long-Distance Trade, 1350-1500, Julius showed how economic network theory can be used to evaluate both the commercial links between Venetian patricians and the transmissions of political information enabled through these interconnections, and argued that the extent to which commercial and communication networks were mutually embedded necessitated a new model to capture the dynamics of the transmission of political information in early modern long-distance trade. Ming-kin offered a case study of the relationship between early Southern Song literati and the chief councilor Qin Gui through an analysis of Zheng Gangzhong’s epistolary writings in his presentation “Epistolary network in Middle Period China: the Case of Zheng Gangzhong 鄭剛中 (1088-1154)”. He showed how Zheng Gangzhong attempted to build a good rapport with the people surrounding the councilor Qin Gui in order to maintain the former’s position in Sichuan, discussing in particular the relationship between Zheng’s epistolary network and Qin’s long tenure as chief councilor. In her discussion, Hilde highlighted the panel contribution’s distinct conceptual use of “networks”, namely as a particular kind of interpersonal relationship, a philological tool, and a theory of relationships, flows and interactions.

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International Medieval Congress 2013

Posted by: mchu in member presentations chinese history comparative history 8 years, 2 months ago

On July 1-4, 2013, the International Medieval Congress (IMC) was held at the University of Leeds. Hilde organised and chaired a session on “Comparative Approaches to Elite History” (session 202) on the first day of the Congress. The panel featured papers by R.I. Moore, Hsien-huei Liao, and “Communication and Empire” research associate Julius Morche. The session explored comparative approaches to late medieval elite history focusing on elite responses to crises. R. I. Moore examined how the eleventh century can be seen as a crisis moment in global history by comparing elite responses to crises across Eurasia. Liao Hsien-huei presented findings from a comparative project on strategies for coping with the future in medieval Asia and Europe, focusing in particular on Chinese elite networks and mantic practices.

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Digitization in the Humanities

Posted by: mchu in member presentations digital humanities 8 years, 6 months ago

Anne Chao (Rice University), Judith Pfeiffer (University of Oxford) and Hilde De Weerdt (King's College London) are organizing the workshop “Digitization in the Humanities” at Rice University, April 5-7, 2013. The workshop offers hands-on introductions to tools and methods in the Digital Humanities. The organizers invited six experts, including Derek Ruths (McGill), Marcus Bingenheimer (Temple), Timothy Tangherlini (UCLA), Dennis Tenen (Columbia), Shih-Pei Chen (Harvard) and David Mimno (Princeton), to teach markup, text-mining, network analysis and mega-data management.

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Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies

Posted by: mchu in member presentations chinese history digital humanities 8 years, 6 months ago

Three team members of the research project, Hilde, Brent and Ming-kin, participated in the Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, March 21-24, 2013 in San Diego. On the first day of the conference (March 21), Ming-kin presented a paper titled “Shifting Loyalty: The Case of Liu Mengyan (1219-1295)” in the panel “Collaborating with the World Conquerors: Non-Mongol Officials, Local Elites, and Governing Strategies in the Early Yuan Dynasty”. Through the case study of a leading Southern Song official Liu Mengyan, he evaluated the Yuan court’s attempt at utilizing the networks of former Song elites for the sake of facilitating its governance in south China.

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The Representation of Chinese History in Comparative Studies of Empire

Posted by: mchu in member presentations chinese history comparative history 8 years, 6 months ago

Hilde gave three presentations in February 2013 (February 6 at the London Centre of the University of Notre Dame, February 11 at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), and February 25 at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)) on the representation of Chinese History in comparative studies of pre-eighteenth-century empires. In these presentations she reviewed disciplinary and cross-disciplinary trends in the comparative history, historical sociology, and political science of pre-industrial empires, focusing on three methodological problems: typicality, scalability, and divergence. She argued that Song history and the collective response to the geopolitical crises of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in particular should become part of the comparative social and political history of empires and other political formations.

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Recent blog posts

International Medieval Congress 2015 by mchu, July 30, 2015, 3:11 p.m.

Team members Hilde De Weerdt, Chu Mingkin and Julius Morche contributed to the panel “Historical Knowledge Networks in Global Perspective” ......read more

MARKUS update and new tools by hweerdt, March 12, 2015, 6:38 a.m.

The MARKUS tagging and reading platform has gone through a major update. New features are ......read more

Away day for the "State and society network" at LIAS by mchu, Dec. 5, 2014, 12:40 p.m.

Team members Hilde De Weerdt, Julius Morche and Chu Ming-kin participated in the Away Day of the “state and society ......read more

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