Royston Lin 林進勇

Royston Lin Lecturer Doctoral Candidate   Office: KG IV, Room 4425 Telephone: 0761/203-3418 E-Mail: royston.lin@geschichte.uni-freiburg.de Office Hours: By appointment

Doctoral Project

Veneration of Catholic Saints in the Jesuit Mission in China between the Sixteenth- and Eighteenth Century

The cult of saints is a hallmark of the Catholic religion. When missionaries from the Society of Jesus (re-)introduced Catholicism to China in the 1580s, they also brought with them different customs to remember and venerate the holy men and women whose souls were believed to be in heaven. This Christian tradition of honouring the deceased shared some similarities with ancestral veneration and worship of deities in Chinese belief system and could have been convenient ‘entry points’ for Chinese converts to ease themselves into the Catholic faith.

This dissertation project seeks to examine the age-old Catholic practice of venerating saints among Christian communities in the Jesuit missions during the late imperial China, specifically between the sixteenth and eighteenth century. For a long time, study on Chinese missions appeared to have relegated the locals as mere passive recipients of the foreign faith from the Catholic missionaries, whether in doctrines or practices. This could not be further from the truth. While recognising the role of Catholic missionaries in propagating the cult of saints in China, this study aims to return some agency to the Chinese converts, who would have very likely taken on an active part in reinterpreting and localising different aspects of the Christian religion before adopting it as their own.

Research Interests

• Christian Missiology
• Late Imperial Chinese History
• History of Religions
• Folk Cultures and Beliefs
• Cross-Cultural Interactions
• Cultural Heritage

Employment

• August 2021 – Present
  Lecturer (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter),
  Professorship for East Asian History, Department of History,
  Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany
• January 2020 – May 2021
  Manager (Intangible Cultural Heritage),
  Heritage Research and Assessment Division, National Heritage Board, Singapore
• September 2019 – January 2020
  Curatorial Project Manager,
  Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall 孙中山南洋纪念馆, Singapore
• October 2017 – August 2019
  Research Assistant to Prof. Dr Jürgen Osterhammel,
  Modern and Contemporary History, Department of History,
  University of Konstanz, Germany
• April 2017 – August 2019
  Research Assistant to Prof. Dr Sabine Dabringhaus,
  Professorship for East Asian History, Department of History,
  Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany
• April 2015 – September 2016
  Manager (Intangible Cultural Heritage),
  Heritage Research and Assessment Division, National Heritage Board, Singapore
• January 2014 – April 2015
  Assistant Manager (Research and Education),
  Preservation of Sites and Monuments Division, National Heritage Board, Singapore

Education

• Since August 2021
  Doctor of Philosophy in Modern History,
  Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany
• April 2017 – July 2022
  Master of Arts in History (Early Modern Period)
  Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany
• October 2011 – April 2012
  Exchange Semester,
  Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg, Germany
• August 2009 – December 2013
  Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History,
  National University of Singapore, Singapore

Scholarships and Grants

• August 2017 – August 2019
  Scholarship Program for Foreign Students (Ausländerförderung),
  Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Germany
• October 2011 – April 2012
  NUS Awards for Study Abroad Exchange Scholarship
  National University of Singapore, Singapore

Academic Meetings

• 2 – 4 June 2023
  Forschungskolloquium zur Geschichte der Frühen Neuzeit
  (Combined Colloquium for Early Modern History: Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg, University of Bern, University of Lucerne)
  Schullandheim des Kepler-Gymnasiums Freiburg im Breisgau, Schauinsland, Germany
• 15 – 16 March 2023
  Balzan-FRIAS Masterclass: The Balzan-FRIAS Project in Global History
  Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies, Freiburg, Germany
• 13 – 17 June 2022
  Summer Seminar:: 'The Archives of the Religious Orders and Their Education Institutions: A New Perspective on Global Catholicism'
  Rome, Italy

Selected Publications

• Book Review: Qing qianqi guojia zhili yu minsheng zhengce 清前期国家治理与民生政策 (Policies on Governance and People’s Livelihood in the Early Qing Period), by Chang Jianhua 常建华. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中华书局, 2021. European Research Centre for Chinese Studies. 1 September 2023, https://erccs.hypotheses.org/2036.
• Book Review: Yang, Hongfan, Ite missa est – Ritual Interactions around Mass in Chinese Society (1583–1720) (Studies in the History of Christianity in East Asia, 7), Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2022. Submitted to Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung. Tentative Publication: November 2023.