Bio
David A. Palmer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Born in Toronto (Canada), he received his BA in Anthropology and East Asian Studies from McGill University in Montreal and his M. Phil (DEA) in Clinical Psychology/Ethnopsychiatry from the University of Paris. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne, Paris), specialising in the historical anthropology and sociology of Chinese religion, in 2002. He lived in Chengdu (China) for six years during the 1990s, where he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Religious Studies of Sichuan University in 1999-2000. Prior to joining the University of Hong Kong in 2008, he held appointments as the Eileen Barker Fellow in Religion and Contemporary Society at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and as the director of the Hong Kong centre of the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient (French School of Asian Studies), located at the Institute of Chinese Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, from 2004 to 2008. Palmer has given guest lectures in numerous universities around the world including, among others, Oxford University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, the Max Planck Institute (Germany), Peking University, Tsinghua University, the China Academy of Social Sciences, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and the Academia Sinica. He is author, co-author or co-editor of numerous books, journal issues and articles, and is co-editor of the book series Religion in Chinese Societies published by Brill Academic Publishers.
Awards:
Joseph Levenson Prize for the Best Book on China and Inner Asia (post-1900), Association for Asian Studies, 2013 (with Vincent Goossaert, for the book The Religious Question in Modern China, University of Chicago Press.
Francis L. K. Hsu Prize for the Best Book on the Anthropology of China, American Anthropological Association, 2008 (for the book Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in China, Columbia University Press).
Affiliations:
Honourary Associate Professor, Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, HKU
Honourary Research Fellow, Centre for Civil Society and Governance, HKU
Associate Researcher, Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (Societies, Religions and Secularisms Institute), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/EPHE
Affiliated Fellow, Centre on Religion and Chinese Society, Purdue University
Associate Researcher, French Centre for Research on Contemporary China
Community Service:
Community advisor (Auxiliary Board Member) for the Baha'i communities of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Academic Director, Institute for Global Civilization (Hong Kong)
Awards:
Joseph Levenson Prize for the Best Book on China and Inner Asia (post-1900), Association for Asian Studies, 2013 (with Vincent Goossaert, for the book The Religious Question in Modern China, University of Chicago Press.
Francis L. K. Hsu Prize for the Best Book on the Anthropology of China, American Anthropological Association, 2008 (for the book Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopia in China, Columbia University Press).
Affiliations:
Honourary Associate Professor, Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, HKU
Honourary Research Fellow, Centre for Civil Society and Governance, HKU
Associate Researcher, Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (Societies, Religions and Secularisms Institute), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/EPHE
Affiliated Fellow, Centre on Religion and Chinese Society, Purdue University
Associate Researcher, French Centre for Research on Contemporary China
Community Service:
Community advisor (Auxiliary Board Member) for the Baha'i communities of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Academic Director, Institute for Global Civilization (Hong Kong)