Retracing Professional Mobility: Historical Network Analysis through CERD

Abstract

In this blog post, Thorben Pelzer shares some of the experiences his team has made when creating the Chinese Engineers Relational Database (CERD). The idea of the database is to provide a pool of digitized and cross-referenced data that researchers can then analyze to answer their own specific research questions. These questions concern the ways in which engineers operated under, but also shaped, formats and visions of space.

Biographical Note

Thorben Pelzer (SFB 1199, Leipzig University, Germany)

Since September 2017, Thorben Pelzer holds the position of university lecturer for Society and Culture of Modern China at Leipzig University. He graduated in Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, and East Asia Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum. Further, he studied at Osaka University, at Tongji University in Shanghai, and at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. He is an alumni of the German Merit Foundation. As a social and cultural historian of the Republican period, he currently researches Chinese engineers who studied in the USA.