Chinese Engineers Relational Database (CERD) Design Manual

Abstract

The CERD database is a register of engineers from the Chinese Republican period (1912–1949). The digital analysis of historical registers has led to a prosopographic catalogue of persons, educational institutions, and companies. The data can be put in relation to one another by researchers to answer individual research questions. This paper describes the architecture of the database, explains how it works, and presents ways of analysing the data.

Biographical Note

Thorben Pelzer (SFB 1199 & Institute of East Asian Studies, Leipzig University)

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.