This collaborative project featured an international workshop attended by eighteen academics from 12 different Universities held in December 2009. Those who attended included experts in the field, among others, Professor Sander Gilman, Professor Laurence Monnais, and Professor Richard Harris. Workshop participants visited Hong Kong for the event from a variety of overseas institutions, including the University of Toronto, University of California, National University of Singapore, University of Cambridge, King's College London, Emory University, University of London, University of Nottingham, Université de Montréal, Duke University and CNRS.

The workshop and the subsequent volume, Imperial Contagions, addressed a principal theme in the history of colonial medicine in Asia: how fears of contagion, actual or metaphorical, influenced and informed the reordering of colonial societies in China and colonial holdings of Western powers in Asia between 1880 and 1949.

Transnational Histories of Youth in the Twentieth Century emerged from a collaborative project, organised around a workshop, 'A Transnational Age' held at The University of Hong Kong from 24-26 May 2012. The Faculty of Arts co-organised an international workshop with Professor Richard Ivan Jobs of Pacific University (USA), bringing academics from top ranking overseas institutions to Hong Kong. The workshop drew together distinguished scholars to explore how youth became an key agent of transnationalism in the second half of the twentieth century, between Asia and the West in particular.

Foregrounding issues related to the history of youth in Asia and the West in the workshop, 15 experts in the field attended the workshop, including, Ashwini Tambe (Maryland), Andrew Ivaska (Concordia), Fabio Lanza (Arizona), Elena Albarran (Miami), Juliane Fuerst (Bristol), Sayaka Chatani (Columbia) and Jilian Christina Wu (EHESS). The resulting volume examines the emergence of youth and young people as a central historical force in the global history of the twentieth century. Each of the chapters considers the activities of young people from a transnational perspective, emphasizing their agency in the development of global interconnectedness by focusing on a variety of case studies that emphasize topics and regions that too often remain unconsidered. From backpacking in Europe to political activism in Africa, from Malaysian scouting for girls to Franco-Maghribi music, from Argentine Zionism to the Chinese revolution, the local practices and behaviors of the young engaged with the world. This collection is unique in that it analyzes not only the effect of transnationality on youth but also how youth shaped transnationality. It reveals the activities, mobilities, and identities of the young to be a central component of globalization.