Thomas Larkin

Choosing to read the potential increase in one dollar coin circulation as a sign Trump is warming to the U.S. becoming Canada's 4th territory.

Dr Sijie Ren, who was supervised by @robertbickers and Adrian Howkins, was awarded the British Association for Chinese Studies 'Best Doctoral Thesis Prize' for their PhD “Science and Politics in Maoist China: The Synthetic Insulin Project and its Legacy."

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I've then combined the datasets so that all GPS points fall within the attributes table for the lots with which they align. The effect is that we can light up the lots that contain Carl Smith data and embed links to the archive, providing an alt. spatial/temporal means to search the index!

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Eric has also converted the dates into integer values so that we can isolate cards by date range, as many cover a few decades of history. I have then overlaid this data on the MHHK maps that fall within that date range (here's 1866).

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Exciting (for me) progress for this Friday's MHHK update. We've begun to experiment with integrating the Carl Smith Index Card collection for HK history. My colleague Eric Chow has been tokenizing the cards and appending GPS coordinates to recorded locations using the Google Maps API.

We are recruiting a Postdoc Research Associate (Oral History) at the Hong Kong History Centre at Bristol! Please feel free to circulate to any friends and colleagues, and/or get in touch if you're interested.

Wasn't totally satisfied with last week's map transformations, so I've been playing around with Thin Plate Spline transformations on the larger maps this week using the same reference points. Instantly better look, with much more accurate coastlines for Hong Kong and Kowloon.

The interns' primary role is to assist in creating a suite of georeferenced maps of Hong Kong from 1841-1997 using provided archival materials.

Their secondary role will be to enter data into selected maps from a variety of photographic and textual archival sources related to Hong Kong land use.

Candidates should have some background in late-19th/early-20th-century Chinese, British imperial, or colonial history, an interest in mapping, spatial history, and/or historical geography, and be in good academic standing. No prior experience with mapping software necessary.

"Mapping Historic Hong Kong explores how digital mapping tools and new technologies can be integrated with historical research to encourage urban heritage and an appreciation for histories of urban space and/or place, while benefiting both academic researchers and the wider public."

Embark on a Global Research Journey with Globalink Internship Join Mitacs Globalink Research Internship for Students. Expand your academic horizons with international research experiences.

Applications are open for the MITACS Globalink Research Internship, and we're looking for two undergraduate students to participate in the MHHK project next summer at UPEI. Internships are fully funded. Deadline closes 17 September.

Project ID is 49248

www.mitacs.ca/our-programs...

Kowloon also appears to have been a rush job or afterthought in many of these earlier maps. Its shoreline is highly approximate, requires a lot of manipulation, and no two maps that I've found from the era are quite the same in where they place things.

These maps have given me MHHK's first territory map. Ordnance Mapping of mid-nineteenth century HK proved really accurate to a point, but precision fell away once coastlines get involved. The result is that the maps have been easy to centre, but very difficult to precisely align along the shore.

Spent bits of the last week correcting new maps pulled from the HKPRO. Some truly interesting ones of the development of The Peak and Cheung Chau. I've pulled a series that I'm excited about as well that surveys Kowloon, NT, and Sai Wan village lots (still to be processed).

Academic hack: if I split my time between PEI in the winter and HK in the summer, I can gain almost another month of forced vacation on account of weather.

Coastline change, for comparison.

This week's MHHK update. Stonecutter's Island, reclamation projects, and the villages to the west of Kowloon (1964). Not sure how accurate the source map was on rural lots and buildings, so will have to check these against the far more detailed large-scale surveys from the following decades.

Today’s best archival find is Caleb Cushing trying to figure out a suitable Chinese name. He eventually settled on 顧聖, but I think 鼓聲 (drumbeat) should have stuck. Would have looked better on the Treaty of Wangxia and the dozens of red calling cards he had written up.

Discounts, friends!

publication day.

the history of racial violence against immigrants in the early 20th c. remains as important to history as it does to our present

academic.oup.com/jah/article/...

With many thanks to those who supported me on this journey.

This is a fantastic article and such an important project! It sets a high bar for how colonial heritage projects and co-creation should be conducted. MBC also rejects extractive research practices through its efforts to bring research back to the community.

Congrats on the pub @brebisz.bsky.social!

Archives imitate life.

“I am still in Washington and for most of the time we are sweltering in tropical heat”

Love visiting a country where the museums have signs reminding you that you can’t bring your gun along.

This week's MHHK. So many lots to fill. Is the task hypnotic? Yes. Is it therapeutic? No. Have I watched two HBO miniseries while doing it? Absolutely.

While I don't fully agree with the periodization (there are parts of the last 5 months that feel more at home in the Smoot-Hawley era), Immerwahr draws some important comparisons - and also helps us think through the puzzle of Trump's awkward historical self-comparisons.

Now someone do Lincoln.

Medically Manufactured: The Story of Retrolental Fibroplasia By Jenny Hutton ~ When Lula Hardaway was told her 6-week-old baby Stevie was blind, doctors were unable give her an answer as to why. Born two months early in Saginaw, Michigan in May 1950, Stevie …

Congratulations to Bristol PhD student, Jenny Hutton, on her recent NLM blog posting about her historical research. @uobartsmatter.bsky.social @uobrishistory.bsky.social

Medically Manufactured: The Story of Retrolental Fibroplasia
circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2025/06/12/m...

Minnesota police urge protestors not to attend the ‘No Kings’ demonstration out of an ‘abundance of caution’. The far right proves that an abundance of violence will be used to silence dissent.

Today's MHHK work has really been more this week's MHHK work - to the detriment of the article I was supposed to be writing. Got sucked into building a road layer on this 1964 map of Kowloon. While it took forever, working backwards from this map should just be a process of subtraction.

Added MHHK's first georeferenced base map for Kowloon today. Likely going to have to redo it though because I forgot to correct Stonecutters Island.

Eventually the project will include the entire territory, but I can't say I'm looking forward to how long some of those maps are going to take.

The attached photo taken at about 8 pm is of the smoke haze we’re experiencing in one of Canada’s easternmost provinces.