Needham Research Institute

02/05/2025

The NRI Easter Term seminar programme starts today at 3.30pm. Yizhuo Li (City University of Hong Kong) will present on 'Water Management, Flood Disaster, and Theatrical Representation in Late Imperial China'. All welcome! The full programme for this term can be found below.

Needham Research Institute Easter Term 2025 Seminars


Seminars take place Fridays, 3.30-5pm, unless otherwise stated
Address: 8 Sylvester Road, Cambridge CB3 9AF

2nd May Sizhou City: Water Management, Flood Disaster, and Theatrical Representation in Late Imperial China

Yizhuo Li (City University of Hong Kong)

9th May Lost Media: Anarchist Magic Lanternists, Erotica, and Projection Technology in Japan

Lewis Bremner (University of Cambridge/ NRI)

16th May Scientific Instruments Presented to Emperor Qianlong by the Macartney Embassy in 1793

Bin Xu (Palace Museum, Beijing/ NRI)

23rd May Opiates, Psychotropics, and Acupuncture Anaesthesia: The Chinese Communist Party’s Battlefield Medicine and its Impacts (1927–1999)

Shanshan Gao (City University of Hong Kong/ NRI)

30th May Connecting with History through Wood: Case Studies of Wooden Relics in China

Yafang Yin (Chinese Academy of Forestry/ NRI)

6th June Sacred Mountain and Rivers in Palace Memorials (zouzhe 奏摺) and Maps

Xue Zhang (Reed College/ NRI)

11th June Medicinal Wine in Bencao Gangmu
(Wed. 11-12.30)
Wenxue Li (Southwest University/ NRI)

13th June Evolution of the Twelve Stations in the Ancient Chinese Calendar

Guangchao Wang (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences/ NRI)

20th June “My Destiny Is Governed by Me, Not by Heaven”（“我命由我不由天”）– The Ancient Daoist Way to Transcendence: Teachings and Practices of the Eastern Lineage of Internal Alchemy

Lu Zhang (Sichuan University/ NRI)

27th June Living on the Edge: Irrigation Farming and Mountain Pastoralism along the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor

Yuqi Li (Nankai University/ NRI)

For any questions relating to the seminars, please contact Jenny Zhao at [email protected]

08/11/2024

A reminder that the annual Needham Memorial Lecture takes place TODAY (Friday 8th November) at 5pm!

Wind-Fire-Eye or Acute Conjunctivitis: Some Personal Recollections of Accessing the History of Chinese Medicine Through Translations of Ancient Texts

Professor Paul U. Unschuld (Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin)

To be held by kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Clare College, Cambridge at the Riley Auditorium, Gillespie Centre, Memorial Court.

To be followed by a drinks reception. All welcome! No registration required.

07/10/2024

The Needham Research Institute's Michaelmas Term 2024 Seminar programme is now out! Please join us on Fridays (unless otherwise stated) at 3.30-5pm, 8 Sylvester Road, Cambridge CB3 9AF.

11th Oct. Religious Practices and Seafaring Knowledge of Sailors in Late Imperial China

Ilay Golan (University of Cambridge)


14th Oct. (Monday) The Origin and Globalization of the Linked Treadle Loom

Feng Zhao (Zhejiang University/ NRI)


25th Oct. The Relationship between the Book of Outline of Waterway and the Kangxi-era Overview Maps of Imperial Territories

Zhaoqing Han (Fudan University)


1st Nov. Constructing the Gendered Body: A Comparative Study of Corporeality in the Early Iron Age and Eastern Zhou Burials

Min Lin (University of Cambridge)


8th Nov. Needham Memorial Lecture (5pm):
Wind-Fire-Eye or Acute Conjunctivitis: Some Personal Recollections of Accessing the History of Chinese Medicine Through Translations of Ancient Texts

Paul U. Unschuld (Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin)
Riley Auditorium, Gillespie Centre, Clare College Memorial Court


15th Nov. Using and Saving Concrete at the Sanmenxia Dam

Niall Chithelen (University of California, San Diego/ NRI)


22nd Nov. The Introduction of Western Meteorological Knowledge to China in the 19th Century

Xinyue Li (University of Manchester)


29th Nov. The Acceptance of Yuan China Medicine and Emergence of Local Herbs (鄕藥) in the Late Koryŏ Dynasty

Chaekun Oh (Daejeon University/ NRI)

31/05/2024

A reminder that the Ma Kanwen Memorial Lecture given by Prof. Asaf Goldschmidt will take place TODAY at 4pm in the NRI. We hope to see many of you there!

22/04/2024

The NRI Easter Term seminar programme is out! All welcome to the in person events below.

26th April Alteration in Plant-Based Subsistence and Its Influencing Factors from Late Neolithic to Historical Periods in Hexi Corridor, Northwestern China: Archaeobotanical Evidence.

Shi Zhilin (Lanzhou University)

3rd May Matteo Ricci's ‘Hidden Archimedes’: His Preface to Euclid’s Elements and its Influence on the Late-Qing Chinese Intellectuals

Liu Dun (Institute for the History of Natural Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences)

10th May Takebe Katahiro on the Nature of Mathematics

Zhou Chang (Xi’an University of Post and Telecommunications)

17th May The Culture of Agronomy at the End of the Qing Empire

Peter Lavelle (University of Connecticut)

24th May Long-term Human-plant Relationship: Food Practices, Paleoenvironmental Dynamics, and Societal Processes in the Northern Zone, China, during the Neolithic

He Yahui (Stanford University)

31st May Ma Kanwen Lecture (4pm start): Ancient Canons vs. Contemporary Practices – Medical Practice in China during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Asaf Goldschmidt (Tel Aviv University)

7th June No seminar (SFSP Conference)

14th June Bidirectional Demonstration of Joseph Needham’s Taiwan Visit in 1984

Chen Po-Hsun (University of Manchester)

21st June Calligrapher or Replicator? A Study of the Craftsmanship of the Inscriptions on Zeng Bo Qi Hu

Chen Beichen (Capital Normal University)

15/01/2024

We’re pleased to share the Needham Research Institute Lent Term 2024 Seminar Programme, starting this Friday 19th January!

The seminars take place in person on Fridays, 3.30-5pm. Address: 8 Sylvester Road, Cambridge CB3 9AF


19th Jan

Herbert Chatley (1885-1955), ‘Old China Hand’ and Correspondent of Joseph Needham

Catherine Jami (CNRS, Paris)


26th Jan.

The 1954 Yangzi River Flood, Disaster Politics, and Environmental Technologies

Liang Yue (State University of New York at Binghamton/ NRI)


2nd Feb.

Science or Art: Natural History Drawings and Illustrations in China and Europe

Hu Haohua (China Academy of Art/ NRI)


9th Feb.

Wang Tao and the Circulation of Knowledge about Western “Celestial Boats” in Late
Nineteenth-Century China

Wang Shengyu (NRI)


16th Feb.

The Elusive Water Planet: The Visibility of Mercury and the Conflict between European and ‘Muslim’ Astronomy in Beijing, 1657

Christopher Cullen (NRI)


23rd Feb.

Neuroanatomically Speaking: Reassessing Anatomy in Korea under Japanese Rule

Bernhard Leitner (Ca'Foscari University of Venice)


1st March

The Circulation and Application of Chinese Dendrobium in Europe from the 17th to 19th Century

Yang Shujia (Palace Museum, Beijing/ NRI)


8th March

Three Questions Regarding the Study of Bronze Casting Techniques at the Sanxingdui Site

Guo Jianbo (Sichuan Province Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute/ NRI)


15th March

Two Important Factors in the Origin and Development of Ancient Chinese Glasses: Exchanges along the Silk Road and the Native Tradition

D**g Junqing (Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, CAS/ NRI)

07/11/2023

[China Research Seminar] Dr John Alekna (Peking University / Needham Research Institute) "Seeking News, Making China Information, Technology, and the Emergence of Mass Society"

Time: 2pm, 9 Nov (Thursday), 2023 (in-person only)
Venue: Room LG18 (Law Faculty, Sidgwick Site)

We are treated to a newly-added China seminar this Thursday by Dr John Alekna from Peking University, who is a visiting research fellow at the Needham Research Institute. Please help us publicise this event to other interested parties. He will speak to us about his new book. Hope to see many of you there!

Abstract
Contemporary developments in communications technologies have overturned key aspects of the global political system and transformed the media landscape. Yet interlocking technological, informational, and political revolutions have occurred many times in the past. In China, radio first arrived in the winter of 1922-23, bursting into a world where communication was slow, disjointed, or non-existent. Less than ten percent of the population ever read newspapers. Just fifty years later, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, news broadcasts reached hundreds of millions of people instantaneously, every day. How did Chinese citizens experience the rapid changes in information practices and political organization that occurred in this period? What was it like to live through a news revolution?

John Alekna traces the history of news in twentieth century China to demonstrate how large structural changes in technology and politics were heard and felt. Scrutinizing the flow of news can reveal much about society and politics—illustrating who has power and why, and uncovering the connections between different regions, peoples, and social classes. Taking an innovative, holistic view of information practices, Alekna weaves together both rural and urban history to tell the story of the rise of mass society through the lens of communication techniques and technology, showing how the news revolution fundamentally reordered the political geography of China.

Link to book: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=36733&bottom_ref=subject

Speaker
Dr John Alekna a historian of information, technology, and politics in modern China, currently an Assistant Professor in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine Department at Peking University in Beijing. He joined the department in 2020. A native of Boston, Massachusetts, he received my PhD from the History Department at Princeton University. During Michaelmas term of 2023 he is a visiting research fellow at the Needham Research Institute.

01/11/2023

Taking place this Friday 3 November at 5pm, all welcome!

6th JOSEPH NEEDHAM MEMORIAL LECTURE
Professor Dame Jessica Rawson (Merton College, Oxford) "Finding China’s Present in Its Past"

Time: 5.00 pm, 3rd November 2023
Venue: The Riley Auditorium, Gillespie Centre, Memorial Court (Clare College, Cambridge)

Abstract
When we look at China today, we forget that this vast continental power faces east. To the west, the altitude of the wide Tibetan plateau, and the deserts and mountains of Central Asia and the steppe, constricted early contact with regions in Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean that the West too easily thinks of as the sources of civilisation. In its own climate, dominated in the summer by the Pacific Monsoon, alternating in the winter with the Westerlies, China’s agriculture developed separately and differently. And this is true of China’s culture as a whole. In place of the familiar ancient Egyptian or Greek monuments of temples and deity figures in stone, the early culture is written in a wealth of bronze banqueting vessels, orchestras of bell chimes with zithers and lacquered furniture carefully preserved in immense deep tombs to ensure a rich afterlife for the ancestors. The central role of the family, in which the ancestors continue to be present, is rarely recognised, although this social structure was and remained the model for the Chinese state. The huge population provided a highly organised, skilled work force, capable of creating thousands of terracotta soldiers for the First Emperor and realising today’s formidable infrastructure of high-speed railways. Even with communication along the steppe, across the Central Asian deserts and over the sea, China’s unique culture became and has remained distinct.

Speaker
Professor Dame Jessica Rawson joined the British Museum to serve over the years 1968-1994 as Assistant Keeper, Deputy Keeper, and finally, Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities. She was Merton’s first female Warden, serving for 16 years from 1994 to 2010. She was also Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 2006 to 2011 and was appointed Professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology at Oxford in 2000. She received a CBE in 1994 and was awarded the title of Dame in 2002 for services to oriental studies.

Her primary academic interests are in early China’s history and material culture. She is best known for her research on the interaction of the peoples of central China with those along the borders with northern Eurasia, which resulted in major innovations, such as the introduction of metallurgy to China. She has presented her research as a Global Fellow at Peking University in 2017 and as an Academic Fellow at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou from 2017 to 2019. She has also taught at the Universities of Cambridge, London and East Anglia, and has held visiting professorships at the universities of Heidelberg and Chicago. For the academic year 2013-2014, she held the position of Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge.

For further information, please visit the website of Needham Research Institute
https://www.nri.cam.ac.uk/Rawson_Needham_2023.html

03/10/2023

Welcome back to a new term at Cambridge! We're pleased to share the NRI Michaelmas Term seminar programme. The sessions will take place in person on Fridays, starting this Friday 6th Oct. - all welcome!

25/04/2023

The Needham Research Institute Easter Term Seminar Programme is now out! The first session starts this Friday 28th April, with a text-reading session led by Jose A. Canton-Alvarez. Do please come and join us.

26/01/2023

Happy New Year of the Rabbit!

We start the Lent Term programme on Friday 27th January. Do come and join us! You may find the full programme below.