Abstract: 



Hong Kong is an excellent place for studying the tension between the “globalisation of difference” and the challenge of creating an inclusive collective memory due to “Asia’s World City’s” colonial past and postcolonial plurality of history. In particular, memorials are an indicator and factor of historical change of collective memories because they represent imagined communities and contribute to their (re-) making. Andreas Leutzsch will introduce iconology as a method to analyse and teach the transnational socio-political history of Hong Kong’s memorials from World War II to the “handover” in 1997.  In his talk he will deal with several cases, such as the Hong Kong War Memorial Fund or the Sai Wan (Bay) War Cemetery Memorial, focusing on the transformations of memorials and collective memory in Hong Kong.



Bio:



Andreas Leutzsch is Visiting Professor at the Centre for German and European Studies, Bielefeld University/Saint Petersburg State University. He previously taught history and politics at the University of Hong Kong (2012-2017) and Bielefeld University (2007-2012). In 2007, the WZB Berlin honoured his research in global history and politics with the A.SK Social Science Award Fellowship. Currently, Andreas is doing research regarding theory of history and global history.