Tim Yung is a historian of Hong Kong, modern China, and world Christianity. His research explores religious encounter between foreign missionaries and China, especially the formation of Chinese Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His publications illustrate the many facets of Chinese Christianity, ranging from schools to social welfare, from the individual to the nation. He is committed to the ongoing development of teaching and learning and was accredited as Fellow of Advance HE in 2024.

RESEARCH

My current project examines how missionaries and Chinese Anglicans in South China worked together to figure out the shape of Chinese Christianity between 1850 and 1950, navigating dynastic change, nationalism, war, revolution, and the decline of foreign imperialism. I am also working on several projects relating to higher education research and development in collaboration with others.

Research Interests

• World Christianity
• Hong Kong history
• Empire and decolonization
• Modern China
• Academic Socialization

PUBLICATIONS

Articles

‘‘Does God Mind?’: Reshaping Chinese Christian Rites of Passage, c.1877–1940’, Studies in Church History, 59 (2023), 359-82. Awarded Michael J. Kennedy Prize for best paper given by a postgraduate student at annual conferences of the Ecclesiastical History Society.

‘Crafting and Communicating Theology in the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui, 1849-1949’, in Modern Chinese Theologies Volume 1: Heritage and Prospect, ed. Chloë Starr (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2023), 157-80.

A Short Biography of Charles Ridley Duppuy, Bishop of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Religious Education Resource Centre, 2021).

‘Visions and Realities in Hong Kong Anglican Mission Schools, 1849-1941’, Studies in Church History, 57 (2021), 254-76. 

‘Keeping up with the Chinese: Constituting and Reconstituting the Anglican Church in South China 1897-1951’, Studies in Church History, 56 (2020), 383-400. 

Book Reviews

Review of Jukka Helle, Towards a Truly Catholic and a Truly Asian Church: The Asian Wayfaring Theology of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) 1970-2020 (Leiden: Brill, 2022), in Religious Studies Review 50:1 (April 2024): 179-80.

Review of Thomas Reilly, Saving the Nation: Chinese Protestant Elites and the Quest to Build a New China, 1922-1952 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), in Religious Studies Review, 48:1 (March 2022): 133.

Review of Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood, eds, Ecumenism and Independency in World Christianity: Historical Studies in Honour of Brian Stanley (Leiden: Brill, 2020), in Religious Studies Review, 47:2 (June 2021): 234. 

Review of Mark P. Hutchinson, ed., The Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions, Volume V: The Twentieth Century: Themes and Variations in a Global Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), in Religious Studies Review, 46:3 (September 2020): 413.

Review of David Woodbridge, Missionary Primitivism and Chinese Modernity: The Brethren in Twentieth Century China (Leiden: Brill, 2019), in Religious Studies Review, 46:1 (March 2020): 103.

TEACHING AND COURSES TAUGHT

• HIST1017 Modern Hong Kong
• HIST2130 The Civilizing Mission and Modern European Imperialism
• HIST2191 History of Chinese Christianity
• HIST2202 Christianity in Asia
• HIST4024 Writing Hong Kong History
• HIST7008 Doing Hong Kong History (MA)
• HIST7020 Religion in Hong Kong History (MA)