Hong Kong Palace Museum | HKPM Talk Series | The Role of Digital Technologies in Heritage Preservation and Research in Museums and Universities

Dr Wei-Cheng Lin

Associate Professor of Art History and the College
Chinese Art and Architecture
The University of Chicago

Wei-Cheng Lin specializes in the history of Chinese art and architecture with a focus on medieval periods. His primary research interests concern issues of visual and material culture in Buddhist art and architecture and China’s funerary practice through history. He is the author of Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai (University of Washington Press, 2014). He has additionally published on a variety of topics, including collecting history, photography and architecture, the historiography of Chinese architectural history, and contemporary Chinese art. Lin is on the steering committee of the Center for the Art of East Asia and has worked closely with the UChicago Center in Beijing for art exhibitions, conferences, and publications. Lin is the Faculty Director for the Dispersed Chinese Art Digitization Project (DCADP), a digital humanities initiative supported by the Cyrus Tang Foundation. In addition to the digital projects, Lin also manages the DCADP publication series, including Exhibiting East Asian Art in a Global Context (co-edited with Chelsea Foxwell, published Jan 2026), Beijing Zhihua Temple (forthcoming later 2026), and Restoring the Fragments: A Revisit to the Longmen Grottos and Digital Reconstruction of Binyang Central Cave (forthcoming later 2026). He is also the curatorial consultant of the exhibition “Fragmented yet Connected: Paths to Wisdom at the Zhihua Temple” at the UChicago campus in Hong Kong.

Dr Timothy P. Harrison

Professor of Near Eastern Archeology and Director of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures
The University of Chicago

Timothy P. Harrison, a renowned academic leader and scholar with decades of research experience in the Middle East, has been appointed director of the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa (ISAC) and a professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. A UChicago alum, Harrison, AM’91, PhD’95. He focuses his research on the rise of early social complexity in the ancient Near East, specifically the complex societies of the Bronze and Iron Age of the Levant. He has more than 35 years of experience conducting field research, primarily in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Iraq.

Dr Daisy Yiyou Wang

Deputy Director and Chief Curator
Hong Kong Palace Museum

An award-winning international curator and institutional leader, Dr Daisy Yiyou Wang is responsible for the strategic and managerial direction of the Museum’s ambitious exhibition programme and curatorial research. Dr Wang also leads the Museum’s Design and Publishing teams. Dr Wang directed the Museum’s Conservation and Collection and Learning and Engagement teams from 2019 to 2026 when she supported the Museum Director to develop and implement transformative strategic plans for audience building and collection development. Dr Wang has held key curatorial and leadership positions at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Asia Society Museum in New York, and the Peabody Essex Museum. A specialist of the history of collecting and Ming and Qing art, Dr Wang has published widely and received a number of awards, including a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Smithsonian Scholarly Studies Award, as well as a Getty Museum Leadership Fellow. She co-curated the ground-breaking exhibition “Empresses of China’s Forbidden City”, which was named the “Most Influential International Exhibition from Chinese Museums” in 2019.

Ms Yannick Ma

Assistant Curator
Hong Kong Palace Museum

Ms Yannick Ma's research interests include critical heritage studies and new museology. At the Hong Kong Palace Museum, Ms Ma has serviced as an in-house co-curator for the major exhibition “Ancient Egypt Unveiled: Treasures from Egyptian Museums” and made curatorial contributions to two other exhibitions, “The Adorned Body: French Fashion and Jewellery 1770–1910 from the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris” and “The Origins of Chinese Civilisation”. She holds a B.A. in archaeology from Peking University and a M.A. in museum anthropology from Columbia University.

Ms Elizabeth O'Neill

Executive Director (Interim) of The Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex
The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong

Elizabeth O’Neill is the Executive Director (Interim) of The Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex |The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong. She is also the Associate Dean for Booth Global Degree Programs and Executive Director of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Robert Rothman, ’77, London Campus. Before joining the University of Chicago, she was based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as the Executive Director of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA Program. Prior to this, Elizabeth had extensive senior leadership experience and a 20-year career at the non-profit Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE), managing international exchange program operations in the US and Asia and leading CIEE’s government and advocacy efforts. Elizabeth also serves as a Trustee for The Cyril Taylor Charitable Foundation (CTCF), and chairs CTCF’s grants committee, focused on grant giving to charities which further intercultural activities and international education.