Support for Research Resources

The Institute has supported a number of projects and conferences to make basic reference materials available to researchers and encourage research in those materials in Asia. Examples of the Institute's efforts in this include:

Confucianism in Vietnam

Harvard-Yenching Institute has supported a sustained effort to encourage the study of Confucian materials in Vietnam, holding 5 conferences to date on the topic (1997, 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007). The first three conferences concentrated on the methodology and role of Confucianism in Vietnam and Southeast Asian countries. The fourth conference targeted the Han-Nom materials preserved at the Institute of Han-Nom Studies. The fifth conference was held in Hanoi in 2007. The Institute has also provided funding to increase awareness of Han-Nom Studies website supporting downloadable and keyword-searchable full-text access to the Journal of Han-Nom Studies (1984-2005).

Dialogue Between Chinese and Islamic Civilizations

After the Harvard-Yenching Chinese Alumni conference held in 2000 on the topic of dialogue between civilizations, Nanjing University scholars began to work on a dialogue between Chinese and Islamic civilizations in China. Four international conferences (2002 in Nanjing, 2005 in Yinchuan, 2006 in Kunming and 2008 in Nanjing) were sponsored by the Harvard-Yenching Institute and Nanjing University to promote the dialogue between Chinese and Islamic civilizations.

Guodian Bamboo Strips

Harvard-Yenching Institute began supporting the effort to keep the texts available to all scholars and open to the widest possible exchange of ideas. The Institute has sponsored two international conferences held at Wuhan University (1999 and 2006) resulting in several publications.