The European Activities of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange
Individual scholars and institutions engaged in Chinese Studies in no less than 19 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Czeck Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Ukraine) have benefited greatly from generous grants awarded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.
The great majority of these grants, which fall into three main categories of doctoral scholarships, Postdoctoral fellowships and grants for institutional enhancement, have been awarded for individual research or collective research projects in the Chinese Humanities.
European research in the humanities has for a long time been severely hampered by lack of funding. The CCK Foundation doctoral scholarships have given a great many young European scholars the financial support without which they would have experienced great difficulties in finishing their Ph.D. theses. The Postdoctoral fellowships have enabled many young and promising scholars to engage in serious research without being burdened by financial worries.
The topics of research undertaken by the Ph.D. students and the Postdoctoral scholars are chosen form an exceedingly wide range of disciplines within the large field of Chinese Studies, such as ancient and modern literature, poetics, musicology, theatre, pre-modern and modern political and social history, intellectual history, historiography, painting, popular art, synchronic and diachronic linguistics, philology, bibliography, traditional Chinese medicine, religion, ancient cults, law and education.
The main criteria applied in the severe screening process are academic excellence and the applicants' ability clearly to define the scope and relevance of their topics. Unlike many other research foundations the CCK Foundation gives equal weight to Classical and Modern studies.
Institutional enhancement: has been achieved by grants enabling a great number of European Universities and institutes of learning to appoint staff in specialized fields, such as a Lectureship in the Social Anthropology of China, Cambridge University; a Chiang Ching-kuo Lectureship in Classical Chinese, Edinburgh University; a Lectureship in the History of Chinese Science and Medicine, London University; an Instructor of Chinese Language, Oxford University; a Dr. Hu Shih Visiting Professorship, Leiden University; a Distinguished Lectureship: Culture and Society in Contemporary Taiwan, Heidelberg University; a Lectureship in Chinese Archeology, London University; a Lectureship in Classical Chinese, Helsinki University; The Re-establishment of the Graduate Program in Modern Chinese Literature at Charles University, Prague; and a Lectureship in Chinese Art, University of East Anglia.
Several European learned institutions and centres of documentation, such as College de France, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, London University and the University of Leeds, have received handsome grants for the cataloguing of and research on important collections. Of particular interest in this connection are the data bases which have been made available at the British Library (A Complete Database of the Stein Collection in the British Library), Heidelberg University (Dynastic Histories Computerized Database, and the Thirteen Classics Data Base). Of great importance is also the Dynamic Data Base of the Holdings of Chinese and Sinological Periodicals in the Major European Collections, European Association of Chinese Studies.
The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, has received a generous grant for the continued publication of its Bulletin. Among other recipients of publication grants may be mentioned The Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, for The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China, and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, for the publication of the Catalogue of the Chinese Dun-huang Manuscripts in the National Library.
The following list shows the great variety of important research projects which have been sponsored by the CCK Foundation: Visual Documentation and Presentation of Traditional Chinese Culture, Leiden University; Southeastern China and its Relations with the Nanyang, Leiden University; Research on the Contemporary Theatre of Taiwan, University of Leeds; Danish-Chinese Relations 1723-1990, Copenhagen University; The Austronesian Arrival. Research Project to Study the Connections between Taiwan and the Papua New Guinean Populations of the Trobrianders and the Roro, Ma-Planck-Society, Germany, and A Collaborative Programme to Assemble and Edit Plays and Lyrics from the Classical Min-nan Theatre, String Puppetry and Art Song, Oxford University.
By sponsoring conferences organized by the European Association of Chinese Studies and national associations the CCK Foundation has played a very active role in strengthening the cooperation between European scholars in the important fields of Sinology. I feel greatly honored to have been given the opportunity to be associated with the CCK Foundation activities in Europe.
