08.11.2024

Lecture: Dr. CHEN Hailian, "The Art of Engineering Modern China: Technology and Late Qing Educational Reforms Revisited"

On Tue, Nov 12, 16:00, Chen Hailian will give a lecture on her current research project

Dr. Chen Hailian (University of Trier, TRANSMARE Institute), “The Art of Engineering Modern China: Technology and Late Qing Educational Reforms Revisited”

Abstract Seeking solutions out of the late Qing crisis had been deeply intertwined with China’s modernization process, for which imitating Western-style scientific and technological systems occupied a central position in debates and reforms. This study examines the hitherto ignored concept of technology in the late nineteenth century. Unlike popular narratives that tend to downplay the technical or engineering educational reform (especially before 1895), this study argues that the jiqiju [bureau for manufacturing machinery] and the previously overlooked yiju [bureau for arts] were two
pioneering institutional models founded by the late Qing reformers for developing manufacturing and educational enterprises in the 1860s; and that they stimulated the Confucian scholarly learning of arts and triggered a conceptual shift in institutionalizing the learning of arts, thereby changing the educational system. That last step permitted the establishment of schools for mass education, open for scholars and other social groups.

Bio Dr. Chen Hailian is an engineer-turned-sinologist trained at the Universities of Tsinghua and Tübingen. She was recently a principal investigator of an BMBF-project conducted at the University of Leipzig (2019–2023). That research project examines the history of technical education in China. Dr. Chen was also a worldmaking fellow (2023) at the University of Heidelberg and held a replacement professorship (Lehrstuhlvertretung in WS 2023-24) at Ruhr-University Bochum. Currently she has received a grant from the Jeanne-Baret-fund (2024-25) to join the TRANSMARE Institute, University of Trier. Dr. Chen’s research has explored the history of mining practices, governance of resources (zinc, coal, and human resources), and engineering/technical education in early modern and modern China. She is the author of Zinc for Coin and Brass: Bureaucrats, Merchants, Artisans, and Mining Laborers in Qing China, ca. 1680s–1830s (Leiden: Brill, 2019), and one of the guest-editors of a special issue “Mobilizing global knowledge: Institutionalising expertise in East Asia’s industrial transition” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (2024).

Tuesday, 12 November 2024, 16:00
Hybrid session in Wilhelmstraße 133, Raum 62, or via
https://zoom.us/j/99615912636?pwd=4IBpLvhaShIkHDKzxzEPnvKGz7Rjrm.1
Zoom ID: 996 1591 2636, Passcode: 675443