The Queen's College Record 2020

Since we launched the Centre
it has gained in international
visibility, and its activities have
expanded to include new partners.
A Memorandum of Understanding
was signed last year with the Jao
Tsung-I Academy (JAS), Hong
Kong Baptist University, to promote
scholarly exchange and research
collaborations between the two
centres over the next five years. We
also completed the international
competitions for the designs of
the Centre’s logo and journal,
Manuscript and Text Cultures.
Reports and College Activities
Signing ceremony for the Memorandum of
Understanding between CMTC and JAS in
November 2019
The academic year 2019-20
was an exciting albeit sometimes
challenging year for the Centre.
Owing to the epidemic we had
to cancel our activities for the
latter half of Trinity term.
A. Lunchtime colloquia
As part of the Centre’s activities we hold twice-termly lunchtime colloquia (in weeks 2
and 4) with two speakers each. The colloquia are designed to give research students
and early career scholars working on different aspects of manuscript and text cultures in
literate societies the opportunity to present their work at an academic event outside their
usual department, and to receive critical yet supportive comments by specialists working
on related questions in different fields: www.queens.ox.ac.uk/lunchtime-colloquia.
B. Workshops
Central to our activities are our oncetermly
workshops. At these events
leading local and international scholars
present a research paper, followed by
long and intense discussions. Speakers
in the last academic year were Dr Stewart
Brookes (Oxford) in MT19, who read
‘Hebrew palaeography and iconography
Japanese scroll from the Edo period
from a computer-assisted perspective’; and
Professor Peter Kornicki (Cambridge) in HT20
who read a paper on ‘Keeping knowledge secret in Edo Japan (1600–1868)’. The TT20
paper had to cancelled owing to the pandemic: www.queens.ox.ac.uk/workshops.
College Record 2020 | The Queen’s College 57