University of Heidelberg

Erasmus Scholarship for Ronald Chung-Yam Po

27. Sep. 2011

Cluster PhD Candidate Ronald Chung-Yam Po has been awarded an Erasmus scholarship. The member of research project C12 "The Asian Sea", coordinated by Prof. Harald Fuess, will research for one semester at the University of Cambridge where he will be a member of Pembroke College and the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

At Cambridge University's Department of East Asian Studies, Ronald Chung-Yam Po will attend selected seminars and continue to research on his PhD project. Under the title "Sea-Strokes: Conceptualizing the Maritime World in Early Qing China", the PhD student ventures to reconstruct how Chinese cultural elites conceptualized the maritime world in both geopolitical and geographical terms during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Ronald Chung-yam Po is doctoral candidate in the projects C12 "The Asian Sea", coordinated by Prof. Harald Fuess, and research assistant of HRA5 "Modern Chinese Scientific Terminologies", coordinated by Prof. Joachim Kurtz.

The Erasmus Programme, established in 1987 by the European Union, enables students to study for a period of at least three months to an academic year in another European country. The programme guarantees that students do not pay extra tuition fees and provides a monthly stipend as well as a guarantee that the period they spent abroad is recognised by their home university. There are currently more than 4.000 higher institutions in 31 countries participating in Erasmus and over 2.2 million students have already taken part.

Heidelberg University offers Erasmus student exchange in Asian Studies and for Cluster Members with institutions such as Cambridge University, London School of Oriental and African Studies, Sheffield University (United Kingdom), Leiden University (Netherlands), University of Oslo (Norway), University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Venice University and the University of Paris 7 and many more. On behalf of Heidelberg University, the programme is coordinated by the "Akademisches Auslandsamt". The Erasmus coordinator for Asian Studies (Japanese and Chinese Studies) and the Cluster is Prof. Harald Fuess.

The University of Cambridge, founded in 1209, is the second oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world. Academically, Cambridge ranks as one of the top universities in the world. Graduates of the university have won a total of 61 Nobel Prizes, the most of any university in the world. It has a total of 1.500 academic staff and 18.500 students.