History Department, HKU

24/09/2026

Our very own Dr. Bobby Tam shared about his new book Death and Emotions in Anglo-China in a book talk this afternoon at the Faculty Conference Room.

Faculty of Arts, HKU

23/09/2026

History in the Making - Laid to Waste: Exploration as Dispossession in Japanese Hokkaido by Prof. Michael Roellinghoff from the University of Hong Kong, taking place right now in the HKU Arts Faculty Lounge.
Faculty of Arts, HKU

22/09/2026

Join us for an informal session with teachers from public and private schools in Hong Kong. Learn about how a BA in the humanities can lead to a career in teaching. Hear first-hand what it’s like to work in the education sector in Hong Kong. Ask questions! Refreshments will be provided.

Speakers include teachers from Marymount Secondary School, Island School (ESF), Tsuen Wan Public Ho Chuen Yiu Memorial College and more…

Register here: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=109541

Faculty of Arts, HKU

18/09/2026

History Pizza Gathering, happening right now in Arts Faculty Lounge.

Faculty of Arts, HKU

17/09/2026

Register here: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?ueid=109541 (HKU Login Required)

15/09/2026

[LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER] https://www.history.hku.hk/events/history-pizza-gathering

Faculty of Arts, HKU

11/09/2026

Book Talk - Death and Emotions in Anglo-China

Registration link: https://www.history.hku.hk/events/death-and-emotions-in-anglo-china

Engaging with both English and Chinese sources, Death and Emotions in Anglo-China explores how the mourning of the dead in places like colonial Hong Kong and semi-colonial Shanghai was not merely a personal matter but a hotly contested issue. The book pays attention to the dilemma between personal grief and public mourning, arguing that the individual’s chaotic process of grieving was often pushed aside by collective narratives, which stressed the emotional norm of solemnity and the notion of ‘authenticity’. Such collective emotions provided the British, a sentimental rhetoric of sacrifice for their imperial cause, and for the Chinese, a powerful impetus to rising Chinese nationalism by the turn of the century. Focusing on a culturally dynamic context previously overlooked in the field of emotional history, this book contributes to the global dimension of growing interests in historicizing the universal human conditions of emotions and death.

Bobby Tam specializes in the history of death and the history of emotions. His first academic monograph Death and Emotions in Anglo-China explores emotions surrounding death in British colonial and semi-colonial settings in China during the nineteenth century. His previous works include how dead bodies were managed in early colonial Hong Kong. He has also written about the meanings and vocabulary associated with the dead body in urban China during the Late Qing and Early Republican period. His current new research is about history of su***de in nineteenth-century and pre-war Hong Kong.

Faculty of Arts, HKU

10/09/2026

History in the Making - Laid to Waste: Exploration as Dispossession in Japanese Hokkaido

Registration: https://www.history.hku.hk/events/laid-to-waste%3A-exploration-as-dispossession-in-japanese-hokkaido

This talk analyzes the meaning of “wasteland” (荒蕪地 or 未開地) in Hokkaido following its annexation by the Japanese Empire in 1869. I show that “wasteland” did not refer to barren or inhospitable territory but quite the opposite: verdant but unproductive land which, Japanese colonialists claimed, was merely being “wasted” by the Indigenous Ainu people. This land would be "improved” through its exploitation by settlers. Through close readings of the travelogues, field reports, and correspondence of rebel-turned-colonizer Enomoto Takeaki and entrepreneurial private settlers Hayashi Kenzō and Yoda Benzō, I argue that the characterization of Ainu living spaces as “wasteland” was integral to Japan’s claims that their unceded territories constituted terra nullius (empty or ownerless land).

Michael Roellinghoff is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures. He is a historian of modern Japan with broader interests in Northeast Asia and the transpacific. His book project examines the relationship between the doctrine of terra nullius and national sovereignty, the impact of colonial policy on the Indigenous Ainu people, and links between settler colonialism in Hokkaido and in the United States and British and Russian empires.

Faculty of Arts, HKU

This talk analyzes the meaning of “wasteland” (荒蕪地 or 未開地) in Hokkaido following its annexation by the Japanese Empire in 1869. I show that “wasteland” did not refer to barren or inhospitable territory but quite the opposite: verdant but unproductive land which, Japanese colonial...

09/09/2026

History in the Making - Childhood journeys across the seas: Locating children in shipboard spaces by Dr. Catherine Ladds from Hong Kong Baptist University, happening right now in the HKU Arts Faculty Lounge.

Faculty of Arts, HKU

07/09/2026

Check out our History in the Making Fall Events Line-up!