The WongAvery Visiting Scholar Exchange Programme 2025
Generously supported by the Avery-Tsui Foundation
Cambridge University Library (CUL) is delighted to announce the launch of the WongAvery Visiting Scholar Exchange Programme. Generously supported by the Avery-Tsui Foundation and in collaboration with the University of California San Diego (UC San Diego), this new initiative will enable doctoral students from the University of Cambridge and UC San Diego to spend between two and four weeks undertaking research focused on the Chinese Collections held at Cambridge University Library (Chinese Section, Department of World Collections).
This programme is a collaboration between Cambridge University Library's Research Institute, Trinity Hall Cambridge, and UC San Diego.
The deadline for applications to the 2025 Programme has now passed.
The Chinese Collections
The history of the Chinese Collections at Cambridge University Library (CUL) started in the first half of the seventeenth century. Dan xi xin fa fu yu, the earliest Chinese book to enter the CUL collection, arrived with the library of the scholar Thomas van Erpe (1584–1624) in 1632. The Chinese Collection has continued to grow and now includes an array of research materials to support teaching and research in the fields of the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.
Special Collections
The Chinese Collections include special collections comprising hundreds of inscribed oracle bones (ca 12th-14th century BCE), a number of ink rubbings, and substantial holdings of Chinese manuscripts and rare books. These include a Chinese Buddhist sutra dated 1107, which is arguably the oldest printed book in the entire CUL collection.
3D resin print of Chinese Oracle bone. Image credit: Scott Maloney.
3D resin print of Chinese Oracle bone. Image credit: Scott Maloney.
Research Collections
The Chinese Collections also include about half a million titles to support research. Among them are 150,000 monograph titles and over 250,000 individual titles of other (reprinted) materials, including manuscripts from Dunhuang and Huizhou, archival documents and epigraphical rubbings. Over 300,000 titles are included in some 2,000 cong shu. About 3,000 Chinese printed serial titles are held in Cambridge libraries and CUL subscribes to over 1,000 current Chinese printed serials. In addition, CUL holds about 150,000 Chinese e-books, 5,000 Chinese e-serials and 3,500 Chinese microfilm reels.
Programme details
The exchange is available for a duration of between two and four weeks, depending on the nature of the research and the candidate’s preference.
It includes a requirement to be resident in Cambridge for a minimum of two weeks, to be undertaken in a single stint. This is to enable in-depth, in-person engagement with the Chinese Collections. Subject to availability, accommodation will be provided by Trinity Hall.
During this period, the Visiting Scholar will be based at Cambridge University Library, where they will have access to the Library’s physical collections and electronic resources.
The awardee will also have access to the University of Cambridge’s Faculty and Departmental Libraries, and will be supported by Dr Yan He (Chinese Specialist, Cambridge University Library), the University Library Research Institute and via membership of Trinity Hall.
Full details of the programme including the selection process and terms and conditions can be found in the call guidelines (please note these are the 2025 Programme's guidelines so may be subject to change).
WongAvery Visiting Scholar 2025
Emma Laube
The Social View of Religion in the Visual Culture of Late Qing and Republican Shanghai
By utilizing the University of Cambridge library collections, Emma aims to expand her project on the interplay between modern visual culture and religious tradition in Shanghai society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At Cambridge, Emma will consult sources held in the Wade Collection of Chinese and Manchu Books, the Chinese periodicals collection, and the Royal Commonwealth Society collection. In doing so, Emma will aim to answer research questions about how Christianity and issues of gender intersected with perceptions of popular religious material culture.
Further Information
If you have any questions about this programme, please contact the University Library Research Institute at researchdevelopment@lib.cam.ac.uk.
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Built with Shorthand