7 May 2010
Visit by Professor Ben Elman (Princeton)
The URKEW team discussed with Professor Elman about his book "A Culture History of Modern Science in China". Professor Elman also gave his comments and suggestions on our goals and methods of enquiry and answered the team's questions on Chinese intellectual and cultural history, comparative study of the history of science and education, and Sino-Japanese cultural history.
3 June 2010
Visit by Professor Peer Vries (University of Vienna).
Professor Vries lectured on the development of the Great Divergence debate in the last ten years since the publication of the book in 2000, with special focus on the role of culture and institutions. Attended by the URKEW Team, experts from within and outside LSE.
1 July 2010
Visit by Dr. Dagmar Schafer (Max-Planck Institute)
Dr Schafer gave a talk to the team on knowledge transmission and the Chinese approach to innovation. She also outlined her own research projects and gave suggestions on the URKEW project with particular reference to China.
14 July 2010
Visit by Professor Simon Werrett (University of Washington)
Professor Werrett gave the URKEW team a talk on "Spectacle, Invention, and Science: On the Importation of European Knowledge into Russia in the Eighteenth Century". He discussed the way in which scholars from Europe arriving in early 18th century Russia had to accommodate their public lecturing and teaching practices to suit the needs of the Russian court, an act which lay the foundations for a scientific culture in Russia.
3 September 2010
Visit by Professor Shigeru Akita (Faculty of Letters, University of Osaka)
Professor Shigeru Akita (Faculty of Letters, University of Osaka) visited the URKEW Team together with five students (Undergraduate finalists, MA, and PhD levels) studying Global History at Osaka. Presentations were made by both Osaka students and by the Team about latest historiography of teaching and research in Global History.
8 November 2010
Visit by Professors Mark Elvin (Oxford and ANU), Ian Inkster (Nottingham Trent), and Danny Quah (LSE economics and global governance)
Professors Elvin, Inkster and Quah attended the URKEW reading group discussion on Professor Joseph M. Bryant's paper "The West and the Rest Revisited: Debating Capitalist Origins, European Colonialism, and the Advent of Modernity" (The Canadian Journal of Sociology 31, No. 4 (Fall 2006): 403-444). They also responded to Dr Ting Xu's presentation on "The Great Divergence Revisited".
24 November 2010
Visit by Professor Stephan Feuchtwang (LSE Anthropology)
Professor Patrick O'Brien outlined the URKEW project and its up to date development to Professor Feuchtwang who gave his comments and suggestions from a cultural and anthropological perspective, with particular attention on the Chinese cases.
7 December 2010
Visit by Prof. Hossein Ziai, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA (USA)
On a visit to attend the international conference on Islamic Philosophy, Prof. Ziai, currently the professor of Islamic Studies at UCLA and the director of the UCLA Iranian Studies Program visited the URKEW team on the invitation of Khodadad Rezakhani. With his expertise on Islamic philosophy and historical progress of Islamic thinking, Prof. Ziai made a short presentation on the history of learning and thought in the world of Islam. Most of his visit, however, was spent answering the question of the team about the decline of Islamic learning in the later middle ages.
6 January 2011
Prof. Lynn Zastoupil, J.J. McComb Professor, Memphis, TN, Rhodes College USA
He is a scholar of modern European and South Asian history and delivered a lecture to us on the debate whether to support classical Indian education or one based on western knowledge and the English language i.e, following the Anglican or Orientalist method of education and systems of learning in colonial South Asia. The lecture detailed the intellectual encounters produced by modern European imperialism, specifically his analysis of John Stuart Mill's career in the London offices of the East India Company outlining for us the parallels between Mill's views about administering India and his famous intellectual development where the submerged voices of Indians can be found in the imperial discourse that influenced Mill's thinking on education in colonial South Asia. He thus demonstrated to us how South Asians had a voice in colonial administration, at least in the matter of educational policy. He later spoke to us about his new book on Rammohun Roy, a social and religious reformer, and early nationalist bringing out his influence on British intellectual, thereby highlighting the connected aspects of knowledge creation (Rammohun Roy and the Making of Victorian Britain, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010).
24 February 2011
Prof. Nader El-Bizri, University of Lincoln
Dr. El-Bizri is the professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Lincoln, where he specialises in the study of phenomenology in Islamic Sciences, as well as various aspects of Islamic humanism. Formerly a researcher at the Institute of Islamic Studies in London, he also has done extensive research on Islamic philosophy. His visit was part of the URKEW term long seminars on cosmography and science in various civilizations. During his lecture, Dr. El Bizri provided a general outline of the progress of Islamic science and philosophy, from the age of translation to the Golden Age and on to the later Islamic middle centuries. The concentration of Dr. El Bizri's presentation was on the Islamic understanding of nature, as well as the connection between philosophy and physical sciences. To illustrate his point, Dr. El Bizri provided a careful presentation of the life and work of Ibn Haitham, the father of the science of optics, and how his cosmographical understanding had allowed him to study the issues of light, vision, and movement in the way he did. At the end, Dr. El Bizri took much time to answer general and specific questions from the members of the URKEW team on the nature of science and knowledge in the world of Islam.
17 March 2011
Prof. Robert Zydenbos, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Munich, Germany
The lecture defined Jainism and its understanding of cosmology and nature. A detailed description of the Jaina view of the cosmology, the nature and place of man in universe, the concept of God or advantages of doing away with the concept was dealth with. He also shared his expertise on knowledge among and education of Jains in the early-modern times--17th and 18th centuries—wherever possible through institutional as well as personal, home based education. He highlighted the Jains as an important mercantile community in India that have played a significant part in economy.
9 June 2011
Prof. Ruby Maloni, Dept. of History, University of Mumbai, India
She is an expert on Medieval India and has authored several books and articles using English East India Company records. She spoke about merchant networks in the Indian Ocean and how extensive research on them can be used for the URKEW project to study conduits for knowledge circulation. She also spoke about indigenous popular response to introduction of western knowledge in 19th century South Asia.
21 June 2011
Visit by Professor Pamela Smith (Columbia University, NYC)
Professor Smith presented to the URKEW team the core issues of her current work on the scientific revolution in Europe and the role played by craftspeople in shaping a new understanding of nature characterised by an operative, experiential (experimental) approach. She also outlined the first steps of her new research looking into these issues on a comparative global scale. Particularly she sketched the status of the mechanical arts in the medieval and early modern Islamic world.
She engaged with the URKEW project offering comments and suggestions on our goals and methods of enquiry.