The Science, Technology and Medicine Seminar (STMS) series, hosted by the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit, promotes cutting edge cross-disciplinary research that straddles the arts, sciences, and medicine. The aim is to provide a friendly forum to debate and test new ideas, papers, chapters, book projects and grant proposals, as well as topical issues and individual research.
If you are interested in joining the seminars, please let us know.
We welcome suggestions for future presentations and discussion topics.
For further information about STMS activities,
please contact Dr. Ria Sinha at riasinha@hku.hk or on 3917 9073.
Upcoming seminar:
21 October 2024 (Monday) | 4:00 pm | Room CPD-LG.60 (Centennial Campus, Main Campus, HKU)
Title: Procrastinated “Modernity”? The establishment of the Castle Peak Hospital (Tsing Shan) and its aftermath
Abstract:
Many people in Hong Kong should have heard of “Tsing Shan,” the first modern psychiatric hospital in Hong Kong established in 1961. In daily conversation, people in Hong Kong often regarded people with “unusual” behaviors as “Tsing Shan” residents. But historians have not yet explored the history of the Castle Peak Hospital thoroughly and connected the hospital’s history with the developments of Hong Kong since the 1960s. In this seminar, I explore the establishment and the impacts of the Castle Peak Hospital, arguing that the history of the Castle Peak Hospital demonstrates a history of procrastinated modernity in Hong Kong psychiatry. In other words, both the Hong Kong government and the people in Hong Kong were unmotivated to promote modern psychiatry and paid little attention to the welfare of psychiatric patients. Due to the lack of modern psychiatric infrastructures and education programs, psychiatric patients have always been perceived as “mysterious” and “unpredictable.” Such hesitation also prompted the mythmaking of psychiatric patients and constructed the myth of “Tsing Shan” which remains powerful in contemporary Hong Kong.
Bio:
Cheung Wai Chung, Douglas is an MPhil student in the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. His current research interests mainly lie in the history of modern China. He has published a journal article in the Journal of Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong branch) about the history of psychiatry in Hong Kong. He received the Wang Gungwu Prize for Undergraduate Students in History. He also shared his research outputs in the Cambridge Economic and Social History Workshop, the Cambridge Cultural History Workshop and the Oxford Hong Kong Forum (2021 and 2022) while an undergraduate at HKU.