On this month, June 2017, the works of our researchers Dr. Bas van Leeuwen and Prof. Dr. Xu Yi, and our visiting scholar Prof. Dr. Yuan Weipeng, have been published in the First Issue of a new bulletin in China, “Big Data and the Study of Chinese History“. This bulletin is published by Social Science Academic Press, and presented by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, and the School of History and Culture, which are both from Central China Normal University, which is also known as Huazhong Normal University.

Dr. Bas van Leeuwen	Prof. Dr. Xu Yi	Prof. Dr. Yuan Weipeng

Since 2013, Central China Normal University has been co-operated with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on the topic of Big Data and the Study of Chinese History. Renowned historians Prof.Dr. James Lee, Prof.Dr. Cameron Campbell and Prof.Dr. Li Bozhong were involved as Adjunct Professor. Annually circa 10 scholars who have expertise on quantitative history research are invited to speak in the lecture series “Big Data and the Study of Chinese History” in Central China Normal University. This bulletin is a collection of relevant researches and speeches.

In the First Issue of the bulletin, the selected research of our researchers Dr. Bas van Leeuwen and Prof. Dr. Xu Yi is: Ni Yuping, Xu Yi and Bas van Leeuwen (2016), “Calculation China’s Historical Economic Aggregate: A GDP-centered Overview”. Social Sciences in China, 37(2), 56-75.

The selected research of our visiting scholar Prof. Dr. Yuan Weipeng is: Ma, Debin and Yuan, Weipeng (2016), “Discovering economic history in footnotes: the story of the Tong Taisheng merchant archive (1790-1850)“. Modern China, 42 (5). 483-504.

The selected speech of our visiting scholar Prof. Dr. Yuan Weipeng is: “a talk on the quantitative history”.