Decolonising Panel Part 2

Historical Perspectives

Historical Perspectives a Scottish-based postgraduate ran network, fostering discussions on historical-based research by PGR students.

This session in our 2022/2023 seminar series features three speakers. Shu Wan, Matthew Hurst, Laiqah OsmanWidely perceived as a precursor drug now, Ephedrine was still rarely known by Western physicians and pharmacists in the early 20th century. This essay will mainly investigate this chemical compound&#x27;s discovery as a kind of medicine between the 1920s and 1930 in the following three sections. The first section examines the early history of prescribing and describing the medical plant Ma Huang in ancient Chinese society and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Before the common era, ancient Chinese physicians, the ancient classic Ben Cao Gang Mu, and the use of Ma Huang in diminishing sweating and treating asthma was intensely discussed, which promoted its widely prescribed by Chinese TCM practitioners. The second section investigates Chen and his colleagues&#x27; collaboration on testing Ma Huang. Serving as a pharmaceutical specialist at Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) in the 1920s, he collaborated with his colleagues consisting of Chinese and Western physicians, chemists, and pharmacists on isolating Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine from Ma Huang. The third section switches to TCM practitioners&#x27; reception and rejection of Chen and his colleagues&#x27; efforts in the examination of the pharmacy and biochemistry of Ephedrine. In the early 20th century, some pioneering TCM practitioners with Western (medical) educational backgrounds collaborated to promote the modernization of Chinese traditional herbal medicine by using Western biomedical methodology and terminology. Reviewing the discovery of Ephedrine and Chinese physician&#x27;s feedback between the 1920s and 1930s, the essay contends that the modernization of TCM and its pharmacy in the early 20th century, which drew medical historians&#x27; attention in the recent two decades, was not a progressive process and pioneering TCM practitioners&#x27; attitude to Western biomedicine was paradoxical.Shu Wan is currently matriculated as a doctoral student in history at the University of Buffalo. As a digital and disability historian, he serves on the editorial team of Digital Humanities Quarterly and Nursing Clio.Recent efforts to decolonise knowledge are hampered by the sources, analytical frames and assumptions that continue to dominate today. Taking the historiography on the decolonisation of British Hong Kong as a case study, this panel contribution will explore the boundaries to decolonising knowledge as well as elaborating potentially fruitful ways of overcoming them. Matthew Hurst is a PhD student at the Department of History, University of York, and is AHRC funded through the White Rose College of the Arts &amp; Humanities (WRoCAH). He holds a Master’s in Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford and adapted his thesis into a peer-reviewed publication published in The International History Review (DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2021.2024588). His research has also been published in/accepted by Hong Kong Studies, Young Diplomat Review and a Hong Kong University Press edited volume, as well as several newspapers and international conferences. Prior to academia, Matthew worked in companies that specialised in UK-China trade, travelling in delegations and delivering talks on this topic across both countries.“Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a programme of complete disorder” (Fanon, 1961). For the sake of brevity, let us sidestep the discourse on the University being a product that is inherently rooted in processes of colonisation (Bhambra et. al, 2018), and assume that ‘decolonising’ the curriculum within this institution is a possible endeavour.In this context, we must first interrogate what is being taught, how it is being taught and to who it is being taught. In its most rudimentary form, decolonial work by those who operate at the lowest level is exhausting, lonely and almost always unrewarding. It is through the recognition of identifying where power lies, that productive decolonial work can begin to take place. At the heart of this process is the consideration, and challenge of, systems of bureaucracy.Laiqah Osman is a fourth year Jameel PhD Student at the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. Her PhD: Muslim Women and the Authority of Online Islamic Content, explores how Muslim women in Britain use, interact and engage with different sources of Islamic authority. She holds a BA in History from Royal Holloway University of London (2017), and an MRes in History from The Centre of Islamic and West Asian Studies (CIWAS) at Royal Holloway University of London (2018). Alongside her studies, Laiqah has gained a breadth of experience in roles focused on ‘decolonising’ history and heritage, most recently as an Intern for the Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative.To find out more about Historical Perspectives, find us on social media, or at our website 	https://histperspectives.wordpress.com

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Decolonising Panel Part 2

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Decolonising Panel Part 2

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