Mobility Project

The David Lam Centre participates, on behalf of Simon Fraser University, in a consortium of twenty-eight universities located in Asia, Europe, Canada, America, and Australia. The consortium was established and is led by the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI) at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU).

The director of the David Lam Centre is currently engaged in discussions with the new director of LEWI, Professor Li Si-ming to establish a cooperative research agenda that will pair SFU scholars with colleagues in Hong Kong for the purpose of pursuing work in thematic areas selected by LEWI in consultation with consortium member institutions.

Promising possibilities exist under the “mobility” theme as two of the David Lam Centre steering committee members are engaged in projects related to culture and mobility: Dr. Shuyu Kong (Department of Humanities and Asia-Canada Program) is working in the area of media in Asian diaspora communities and Dr. Paul Crowe (Department of Humanities and Asia-Canada Program) is working on migration and Chinese religious groups (Daoist and Buddhist).

Current Project Initiatives

Mobility Conference

A proposal is being considered to host two international conferences on mobility. One would be held in Hong Kong and hosted by Hong by LEWI at Kong Baptist University while the second would be hosted in Canada by the David Lam Centre at Simon Fraser University. The aim would be to publish the proceedings.

Religion and Mobility

Dr. Paul Crowe is engaged in a multi-year research project on a network of "altars" (tan 壇), spanning Hong Kong and Canada, dedicated to Daoist transcendent Lu Dongbin 呂洞賓. A second research trip to Hong Kong has been made possible by funding from LEWI and will take place in the summer of 2012.