The development of a local medical culture in the Canton/Hong Kong/Macau region in the global context of the 19th and early 20th centuries can be explained by the processes of knowledge and institutional construction unique to this region, as well as by an evolving epidemiological environment linked to global flows of goods and humans. In her talk, Professor Angela Ki Che Leung presents how the rapidly deteriorating epidemiological situation in the region during this period challenged existing Western and Chinese framing of diseases, and generated strategies of observation and epidemic management unique in this region.

Angela Ki Che LEUNG, born in Hong Kong, obtained her doctoral degree at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. She had done research for more than two decades at the Academia Sinica, Taiwan before she returned to Hong Kong in 2008. She is currently Director and Chair Professor of The Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and Joseph Needham-Philip Mao Professor, University of Hong Kong. She has published articles in Chinese, French and English on Chinese late imperial and modern history including a book in Chinese on philanthropic organizations in Ming-Qing China (1997). Her more recent publications include Leprosy in China: A History (Columbia University Press, 2009), Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia in the Long 20th Century (Duke University Press 2010, co-edited with Charlotte Furth), and a forthcoming volume Gender, Health and History in Modern East Asia (Hong Kong University Press). Her present research interests include the beriberi question in colonial Asia and the construction of nutritional knowledge in modern China. She was elected Academician of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan in 2010.

Professor Tansen Sen will be introducing Professor Leung.