Past Events

Traditional Structure and Exegesis: The Third Hong Kong Young Scholars Research Forum on History and Literature

On 2 March 2024, ‘Traditional Structure and Exegesis: The Third Hong Kong Young Scholars Research Forum on Literature and History’ was successfully hosted by Hong Kong Baptist University. As a continuation of ‘New Documents and New Methods: The Second Hong Kong Young Scholars Research Forum on Literature and History’ (2023) and ‘The First Hong Kong Young Scholars Research Forum on Literature and History’ (2021), this was another major event in Hong Kong for scholars working in the fields of literature and history. It was jointly promoted by specialisms in these areas in four institutions: the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology of Hong Kong Baptist University, the Department of Chinese Literature of Hong Kong Chu Hai College, the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Hong Kong Metropolitan University, and the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Hong Kong Shue Yan University. The induction of the first two of these institutions into the Forum has greatly fostered the continuation, enrichment, and strengthening of its evolving traditions, and this is worthy of note.

In the Third Forum, the issues addressed by the young scholars were many and varied and covered practically the entire gamut of research into Chinese literature and history. From the perspective of epoch, they spanned all eras from the pre-Qin and two Han dynasties to the modern and contemporary; from the perspective of scholarly disciplines, they exhibited their special strengths in fields that included philology, studies of documents and canonic texts, literature, and the history of scholarship, politics, and culture. The wide-ranging outlook, humanistic concerns, and sheer vitality of Hong Kong’s young scholars working in literature and history were thus fully displayed.  

Participants in the Forum were moreover drawn from institutions of Higher Education across Hong Kong and outside, comprising a total of 45 speakers and 18 others taking part in the discussions. These institutions included departments relevant to literature and history in the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, the Education University of Hong Kong, Lingnan University, Hong Kong Chu Hai College, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, and Hong Kong Shue Yan University. In addition, scholars who had previously studied in Hong Kong came from outside institutions such as the National Sun Yat-sen University and Jiangsu University, so the event could truly be called ‘a gathering of all the virtuous’.  

Through this Forum, participating scholars strengthened mutual understanding of their related fields, and as well as establishing and consolidating avenues of communication and exchange, achieved communal encouragement and overall enhancement.