The Review 2009

40 The Review 2009 • Research 41 The Review 2009 • Research Young scholars, their PhDs still fresh in their hands, are often pressed for time to pursue their research ideas because of teaching and other commitments. With that in mind, the Society of Scholars in the Humanities was established in 2009 to attract some of the best young researchers from around the world and let them follow their ideas without a heavy load of formal requirements. The scholarship is rare in that it brings together scholars from different disciplines, and demands only that they meet each week, teach one course per year and share their research findings with the wider University community. The three scholars admitted to the Society in 2009 include a novelist, an Islamic art specialist and a Latin American historian. “One of the principles behind this fellowship is to give people the time and space to work. This is what universities used to be about and HKU is now one of the only places in the world where you can get a fellowship like this, apart from Oxford and Cambridge and a few universities in the US,” Dr Rajeev Balasubramanyam, a novelist who recently completed a PhD in creative writing at the University of Lancaster, said. He will work on his third novel here and investigate the impact of globalisation on literature. The interdisciplinary aspect of the programme is also unusual, according to Dr Cho Minyong, a Korean who has just done post-doctoral work at Harvard University and is interested in how medieval Islamic art was shaped by the intellectual environment at the time. Her experience in the US was that specialists tended to spend most of their time with people in the same field. “HKU and I are a good match at this time in my career because right now I need to be in a nurturing environment rather than with lots of other specialists. Everybody in the Department of Fine Arts has been eager to help me and the programme is structured so that I have to meet people in other fields, which gives me perspectives I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise. It’s not just meeting people from different fields but also different cultural backgrounds,” she said. Time and Space toThink “One of the principles behind this fellowship is to give people the time and space to work.This is what universities used to be about and HKU is now one of the only places in the world where you can get a fellowship like this” Young scholars discuss their work From left: Dr Cho Minyong, Dr Ryan Crewe and Dr Rajeev Balasubramanyam The location in Hong Kong also has academic appeal. Dr Ryan Crewe recently completed a PhD in Latin American Studies at Yale University and will use his time here to investigate trading and missionary links between Mexico and Asia in the 16th century. The main attraction, though, is the scholarship itself. “It seemed such an exciting opportunity for interdisciplinary discussion among the branches of the humanities. That’s what brought me here. We meet every week informally for lunch and talk about our work and how we’re adapting, and we discuss ideas on what kinds of programmes we can develop together over the next two years. It’s a chance to formally begin exploring all the leads we’re finding in our research and see what comes of it,” he said. At the other end of the experience spectrum, established scholars with international reputations are also being brought to the University to enhance our research competitiveness and international collaborations. The Visiting Research Professors Scheme was launched in 2009 to bring academics here for two months each year over three years to enrich our research programme. Eleven Visiting Research Professors have been appointed and Professor Deborah Davis, a sociologist from Yale University, was among the first batch. She is visiting in the Hong Kong Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences and has focused on bringing together scholars in such fields as Chinese history and society and promoting research. “The fellowship allows me to interact with these colleagues, get feedback on my work, and exchange views on new trends. This is a great university at a moment of enormous expansion and change, and it’s also exciting to be a witness to that,” she said.