2017 - 2019 REPORT
Signature Research Clusters
Asian Religious Connections (ARC)
I. Projects Funded by Competitive Grants
The past three years have been highly productive for the ARC cluster (formerly Rethinking Spirituality and Religion in Asia), led by Dr. David A. Palmer. The cluster has notably secured grants of HK $8.2 million from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong for three projects: two — one on religious mobility under the Belt and Road Initiative, and one on Daoist rituals in China, Vietnam, and Laos — led by Dr. Palmer, and one on Christianity and modern China led by Dr. Ji Li.
Among these projects, “Infrastructures of Faith: Religious Mobility on the Belt and Road” (BRINFAITH) has received a grant of HK $6.2 million from the RGC, and is a CRF Project. Directed by Dr. Palmer, the international and cross-disciplinary team comprises 21 scholars from anthropology, geography, sociology, political science and religious studies (see note 4). International partners of the project include the American Institute of Pakistan Studies in Islamabad, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, and the School of Social Sciences of Singapore Management University. The team will develop critically needed expertise for Hong Kong, China and Asia on the religious dimension of the Belt and Road Initiative and its implications and relations with the Chinese world, with applications in public policy, education, and intercultural and inter-religious understanding. The project hopes to generate critical scholarship that will form a foundation for reshaping the social and scientific study of religion in China and Asia.
In 2019, with new injections of resources, the cluster completed the Digital Library of the Lanten Yao Textual Heritage. A collaboration with the University of Münster, this project begun in 2015 with funding support from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme. The project completed the scanning of over 2,000 manuscripts in northern Laos that constituted a resource of unique cultural value in Lanten society. The complete Digital Library of the Lanten Textual Heritage will be available on the Endangered Archives Programme’s website in two phases (EAP791 and EAP1126) (see Web-based Projects).
While carrying out research, the ARC cluster has continued to serve as a platform for scholars from different regions to showcase their work and to engage the wider academic community. In the past three years, a total of 26 lectures and nine workshops were organized, and several talks were presented with other HKU units such as the Department of Sociology and the Journalism and Media Studies Centre.
The cluster has also participated in nurturing scholars in the field of religious studies. It organized a three-week “Asia Network Faculty Enrichment Program” with the Hong Kong–America Center in 2018 for ten US–based faculty members who taught on religious issues in Asia. The program included a week-long seminar in Hong Kong and two-week fieldwork in China and India.
With funding support from the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, the cluster partnered with institutions in India and Indonesia to organize a series of three annual summer schools on “New Approaches to Religious Diversity in Asia: India-China-Indonesia” in 2017–2019. The three-year project has built research, teaching and collaborative capacity among a core network of junior and senior scholars in India, China, and Indonesia through the summer schools, hosted at the Institute and partners in India and Indonesia. The final school was held in early August 2019. The group plans to publish an edited book volume or journal issue on new approaches to religious pluralism in Asia and an online resources for education purposes. More details about the project are available at https://rsa-ici.weebly.com/.
At HKU, the cluster has started collaborations with the Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forum (FaSCORe) in the area of discourses of science and religion. Dr. Palmer and Dr. Michael Brownutt, Associate Director of FaSCORe, have been co-teaching a Common Core Course on “Science and Religion: Questioning Truth, Knowledge and Life” for undergraduate students in the past years.
II. Publications
While research and teaching advanced at a robust rhythm, the cluster has delivered high-quality publications in the past three years:
- Two books were published: Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality, edited by Dr. Palmer with Dr. Elijah Siegler (University of Chicago Press, 2017); and The Civil Sphere in East Asia, edited by Dr. Palmer et al. (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
- Four single-authored/co-authored articles in peer-reviewed journals: two articles by Dr. Ji Li on religions and governance in The China Review and Twentieth-Century China (2018); one by Dr. Palmer and Dr. Jeremy James on religion and the building of a national identity in the Journal of Asian Studies (2018); and another one by Dr. Palmer, Mr. Martin Tse, and Mr. Chip Colwell on cultural objects and Guanyin practices and discourses in Hong Kong in American Anthropologist (August 2019).
Note:
[4] The CRF BRINFAITH team includes five co-principal investigators and 16 collaborators from local and overseas. The co-principal investigators are Dr. Georgois Halkias, Dr. Ji Li and Dr. Junxi Qian (HKU), Dr. James Frankel (CUHK), and Dr. Wai Yip Ho (EdUHK). The collaborators are Dr. Paul Joosse, Dr. Liping Wang, Dr. Loretta Kim, Mr. Joseba Estévez, and Ms. Anna Iskra (HKU), Dr. Weishan Huang (CUHK), Mr. Ian Johnson (Beijing Center for Chinese Studies), Dr. Samsul Maarif (Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia), Dr. Yuting Wang (American University Sharjah), Prof. Kenneth Dean (NUS), Dr. Orlando Woods (Singapore Management University), Dr. Michael Feener (Oxford), Prof. Peter van der Veer and Dr. Tam Ngo (Max Planck Institute), and Dr. Till Mostowlansky (Graduate Institute Geneva).