Research Seminar: History of Climate and Society: Exploring the archives of societies in China
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Date
05 Oct 2022
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Organiser
Department of Land Surveying and Geo-Informatics (LSGI)
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Time
11:00 - 12:00
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Venue
Z414, Block Z, PolyU Map
Speaker
Dr Qing PEI
Enquiry
Ms Anna Choi 3400 8158 anna.choi@polyu.edu.hk
Summary
The current warming trend of climate change has never been seen in the past millennia, which highlights the needs to investigate the relevant history as a reference for the current era. Therefore, “History of Climate and Society” (HCS) has been proposed to understand past climate change and its impacts on society. Archives of societies play a vital role in reconstructing past climate and understanding their historical consequences. China has accumulated a large number of archives of societies, and is one of most important regions under the research focus of HCS in the world. In this seminar, the development of HCS in China will be reviewed based on the usage of Chinese archives of societies. The critical works by Chinese scholars on climate reconstruction and social responses to climate change will be introduced at different scales in time and space. HCS will likely help us to search successful modes of transformation and resilience to climate change from our common past as the historical lessons to modern society under various environmental challenges. The research in HCS will thus hold the significant impact and enable more cooperation between science and humanities, such as digital humanities and environmental humanities.
Keynote Speaker
Dr Qing PEI
Associate Head
Department of Social Sciences
Education University of Hong Kong
Dr. Qing Pei works as Associate Head (Research) and an Associate Professor at the Department of Social Sciences, Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). Before joining EdUHK in May, 2016, he used to work in the University of Cambridge, UK, the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and the University of Hong Kong. As a historical geographer, Dr. Pei’s research areas span across physical and human geography: (1) Historical Geography, (2) Environmental Humanities, and (3) Social-Ecological System. He has particular interests to focus on history of climate and society, methodology development in environmental humanities, and strategies for social resilience under global environmental change. So far, Dr. Pei has published more than 40 papers in SCI/SSCI-indexed journals. Some papers appeared in the flagship journals in the fields of geography, ecology, and multidisciplinary, such as Nature, PNAS, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Global Ecology and Biogeography, and Environmental Research Letters. He also has published a monograph and several book chapters. He is working on a book manuscript, of which proposal has been accepted. In recent years, he won different prizes and honors with a highly competitive basis, such as Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme, Carson Fellowship from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Nature Science Award) from the Ministry of Education, China, and Li Ka Shing Prize.
