The Yu Ying-shih Lecture in History 2023/24 was held on 2 and 5 November 2023 with Professor Michael Puett, Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology, Harvard University, as the speaker.

In order to promote academic and cultural exchanges as well as history research, the “Yu Ying-shih Lecture in History” has been organised since 2007, for which world-renowned historians are invited to visit the University to deliver a series of lectures. This year’s lectures were sponsored by the Austin-Eminence Charitable Foundation and co-organised with the CUHK Department of History and the Hong Kong Museum of History. All lectures were conducted both on-site and online.

The first lecture titled “Comparative Approaches to the Study of Chinese Intellectual History: Reflections on the Work of Yu Ying-shih” was held on 2 November at Cho Yiu Conference Hall, CUHK, and was moderated by Professor Cheung Hiu-yu, Associate Professor, CUHK Department of History. Professor Puett led the audience to follow in the footsteps of Yu Ying-shih in critically reviewing intellectual, cultural, and religious history when exploring world history.

The second lecture titled “Culture and History: Yu Ying-shih, Weber, and Approaches to Comparative History” was held on 5 November at the Hong Kong Museum of History, and was moderated by Professor Puk Wing-kin, Associate Professor, CUHK Department of History. In this lecture, Professor Puett shared with the audience how Yu Ying-shih viewed the inter-relations of Chinese religious and economic history from a comparative perspective.

Through these two lectures, Professor Puett briefly introduced to the audience the comparative approaches to the study of Chinese intellectual history, as well as Yu Ying-shih, Weber and the approaches to comparative history, and pointed out that in the study of Chinese history, history learners should look farther afield, examining and comparing under a global perspective in order to gain insights.

Lecture Review:
1st Lecture 2nd Lecture