News

The Chair for Sinology with a Focus on the Intellectual and Cultural History of China is currently hiring three early career scientists pursuing research in relation to the themes of the sin-aps project The Language of Algorithmic Mathematics. Mastery of German is no requirement. The deadline for ap...

In this workshop, hosted by sin-aps and generously supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, we will approach the global pre-modern history of mathematical concepts in a new light. Dr. Vincenzo de Risi (CNRS, Paris) will give the keynote talk on The Ground of Axioms: New Ideals of Scientif...

Two sin-aps members, Eva Henke and Prof. Dr. Andrea Bréard will participate in a workshop on Discursive and Non-Discursive Reasoning in Chinese Philosophy organized by Polina Lukicheva (University of Zurich), Kai Marchal (National Chengchi University Taipei), Grzegorz Polak (Maria Sklodowska-Curie U...

On July 16 and 17, 2025, sin-aps will host a workshop on Quantifying Education in 20th Century China: Schools as Production Sites and Repositories of Statistics on. This workshop aims to explore schools as institutions central to the production, storage, and communication of population data. It seek...

We invite applications from advanced Master students, early-stage PhD candidates as well as junior researchers working on the long history of the Chinese script and the “sinographic sphere” — without confining the sphere to a specific era. Drawing inspiration from a growing literature on the Sinogra...

Conceptual Engineering in the World History of Mathematics. New Approaches to Pre-Modern Science 2–3 December 2025 @FAU (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), Germany Organizers: Prof. Dr. Andrea Bréard, Ruqing Fei, Eva Henke, and Florian Keßler As KITCHER (1984, 168) has observed, ...

From June 10 to June 13, 2025, the sin-aps group The language of algorithmic mathematics is organising a four-day Master Class, which aims at analysing the migration of mathematical language from Greek to Chinese via Latin. The Master Class brings together scholars and young researchers who have com...

Since its inception, ChatGPT has been increasingly getting better at solving mathematical problems, with current iterations even surpassing the ability of most humans according to OpenAI. But does this ability also extend to pre-modern Chinese mathematics, which uses a language that differs signific...

Andrea Bréard and Stefan Christ have recently edited a Special Issue of the Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies. It focuses on the increasing efforts to quantify the Chinese population beginning in the twentieth century. The introduction explains how it does not understand number...

On 21st March 2025, Andrea Bréard will give a text-reading seminar entitled “Decoding 實如法而一”. The seminar is held at 3.30 - 5 p.m.  at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge. All welcome! The Needham Research Institute is situated at the corner of Sylvester and Herschel Roads, behind Robins...