The Department of History is pleased to announce that the 15th Spring History Symposium will take place at the University of Hong Kong on 8 and 9 May 2026 and will provide a venue for postgraduate students and early career scholars to share their research and form connections with an international community of historians.
The theme of this year’s Symposium is “Past Continous: Historical Narratives from Modernity to the Contemporary”. In today’s world, globalization is facing enormous challenges: trade wars, genocides, anti-immigration sentiments, the destabilization of global institutions herald in the decline of mutual understanding and co-operations. The gaps between economic and cultural capitals, gender, race, class, borders and religions are deepening. In times like this, it is important to cultivate a stable point of reliance and resilience. Searching for a way through, historians inevitably look towards the past: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” such is the tried-and-true cliché. Languages and dialects signal our sense of belonging to a group or communities; literary tropes reveal our deepest dreams, hopes, fears, angers and longings; while history unfolds non-linear trajectories that help us revise, rehearse and re-shape personal and collective stories with each and every advance of the contemporary momentum.
The 15th Spring History Symposium invites postgraduate students and early career researchers from around the world to grapple with questions that have been challenging historians from modernity to the present. We welcome works that produce, employ and engage with robust modes of historical research focusing on events and movements (dis)connecting Asia with the world from the 18th century onwards. Possible topics include, but are non-exhaustive:
- Intangible ideas, tangible institutions
- History of knowledge and technological transfer
- Borders and migration; revolutions and reforms
- Race, ethnicity, gender and marginalized communities
- Childhood, life cycle, medicine and the natural world
- Trauma and memories; public and oral history
- Alternative archives, interdisciplinary historiography
To apply, please submit an abstract of 200 to 300 words and a 1-page CV to us at hkuhistorysymposium@gmail.com. Abstracts and CVs should be combined into a single PDF document labeled in the following format: Familyname_Givenname_shs15 (ex: Su_Jingqi_shs15). After submitting, you will receive a confirmation email.
The deadline for submission is 31 January 2026. Applicants will be notified of the results in March. All papers must be presented in English. Please direct any enquiries to Mr. SU Jingqi at hkuhistorysymposium@gmail.com. Thank you.
Yours Sincerely,
The Organizing Committee of the 15th Spring History Symposium
