Thanks to the generous support from the Lorne Thyssen Research Fund for Ancient World Topics (Wolfson College, Oxford), Max Müller Fund (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford), and Wolfson College Academic Committee (Oxford), the 9th Coffee Break Conference has successfully taken place at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, on 4-6 Dec 2018.

The theme of the conference was “Science and Technology in Premodern Asia”, and there
were altogether 5 panels, on Medicine, Music, Astronomy and Mathematics, Language
Science, and Technology. On the first morning (4 Dec), Prof. Christopher Minkowski from the
Faculty of Oriental Studies delivered the keynote speech titled “The Study of Science and
the Study of Indian Science”, and after that altogether 23 speakers delivered their papers
over the three days. The speakers were mostly from different parts of Europe, but also a
few were coming from the United States and India. For details of the talks and their
presenters, please see the conference program here.

On the final day of the conference (6 Dec), we organised the following two activities: Show
& Tell of manuscripts at the Weston Library, and a visit to the Museum of the History of
Science. On the whole, the conference went on smoothly, according to our plan. Currently,
the possibilities of publishing the conference proceedings are being discussed.

Yiming Shen is a PhD student in Oxford.