Ping-Chen Hsiung - Biography#

Professor Hsiung Ping-chen (BA Taiwan U 1975; MA/PhD History 1983, Brown; SM Public Health, Harvard 1992), is Secretary General, International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH), UNESCO Chair in “Global Asia and Humanities,” McGill University, and CIPSH Chair on “New Humanities,” University of California, Irvine. She served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2009 - 2012), Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor and the Director of the Research Institute for the Humanities (2012 - 2015), Chair Professor of History (2009-2019), and Director of the Taiwan Studies Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2015 - 2018), President of the Asian New Humanities Net (2004 - 2020), Board member of the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes (2005-2019). She was also the Dean of Liberal Arts at National Taiwan Central University (2004 - 2007), and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taipei, from (1983 - 2009). Over the years, Professor Hsiung has held visiting professorships at many leading academic institutions in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, including Harvard Medical School (Department of Social Medicine), UCLA (History, Asian-Pacific Center), University of Southern California (Provost’s Distinguished Visitor), University of Chicago (Department of Pediatrics), Cornell University, University of Michigan, Wellcome Institute (London), DAAD Visiting Professor (Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin), University of Göttingen, Ècole des Hautes Études en Science Sociale (Paris), and Keio University, Japan.

Professor Hsiung’s research interest lies in the areas of women’s and children’s health, gender and family relations, and intellectual and social history of early modern/modern China and Europe. In particular, she led the scientific study of traditional Chinese pediatric medicine and childhood study in Chinese history in the early 1980’s. Her studies of childhood and early education have been influential in the US and China, publishing numerous articles and books in both Chinese and English. In recent years, she was an important advocate of international collaboration in Humanities and Social Sciences, founded the Asian New Humanities Net, an organization that gathered humanities scholars and institutes in Asia, including Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Siri Lanka, held annual thematic conferences to promote cross-discipline and comparative studies of humanities with Europe and the US. She served as the only Asian Board Member of the Consortium for Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), a North American based humanities organization with over 250 member organizations, hosted the first Annual Conference of CHCI outside of North America, in Hong Kong, in 2014, engaging more than 300 international delegates and academic foundations. Becoming the Secretary General of CIPSH, she led CIPSH to enhance its stature in North America, establishing a CIPSH Chair in the University of California at Irvine, organizing a first CIPSH General Assembly and academic conference at the Universities of Tokyo and Keio in Japan, connecting Europe and North America with the Asian Pacific academia.