CUHK
News Centre

The first conference on spatially integrated humanities and social sciences was organized by The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Peking University and National Taiwan University from 16 to 17 March on CUHK campus. The opening ceremony was officiated by Prof. Lin Hui, Institute of Space and Earth Information Science, CUHK, Prof. Tang Xiaofeng, Peking University, and Prof. Sun Chih-Hong, National Taiwan University in Hong Kong, and Prof. Lay Jinn-Guey, National Taiwan University in Taiwan simultaneously by means of video conference. At the opening ceremony, Prof. Kenneth Young, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of CUHK addressed a welcoming speech and Prof. Wang Fahui, Louisiana State University, USA delivered a keynote speech titled “Why Humanities and Social Sciences need GIS?”

There were a total of 7 themes in the conference, including history, politics and economics, spatial stimulation models and methods, sociology, cultural heritages, rural and urban development, tourism and landscape studies. More than 100 scholars and research students from both sides across the Taiwan Strait and overseas presented their researches and exchanged views on the above themes by making use of GIS and spatial analysis and spatial modeling, greatly enhancing academic exchanges and developments in the captioned areas.

The second and third conferences on spatially integrated humanities and social sciences will be held at the Nanjing Normal University and National Taiwan University in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

The conference was sponsored by The Hong Kong Pei Hua Education Foundation, United College and the Faculty of Social Science, CUHK.