Keynote Speakers

Michael Kulikowski

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Classics

Head, Department of History, Pennsylvania State University 

Professor Kulikowski is a historian who works on the political and institutional history of the Roman empire between the second and fifth centuries AD. He proposes a unique perspective in interpreting textual sources against the background of other evidence—which refreshes the historiographical debates about ethnicity in late antiquity. He published four important books regarding the history of the Roman world and the impact of Roman imperialism on neighboring territories: Late Roman Spain and Its Cities (2004), Rome’s Gothic Wars from the Third Century to Alaric (2007), Imperial Triumph: The Roman Empire from Hadrian to Constantine (2016), and Imperial Tragedy: From Constantine’s Empire to the Destruction of Roman Italy (2019). His books are widely read by historians and students and have been translated into other languages, including Italian, German, Portuguese, French, Polish, Greek, and Chinese.

An introduction to Professor Kulikowski’s scholarly contributions may also be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kulikowski

Margaret Kim 金守民

Professor, National Tsing Hua University

Department of Foreign Languages and Literature

Margaret Kim is Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan. Since completing her dissertation on the Middle English poem Piers Plowman under the guidance of Derek Pearsall, Larry Benson, and Dan Donoghue and receiving her Ph.D. in English from Harvard University in 2000, she has taught and studied medieval and early modern literature. Currently her research focuses on European writings of encounter from the Middle Ages. In 2018, she was named Distinguished Visiting Scholar of UCLA’s CMRS Center for Early Global Studies. She has shared her research in invited talks and seminars at Vanderbilt University, Harvard University, and UCLA.

Walter S. H. Lim

Associate Professor, Department of English, Linguistics, and Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore

Walter S H Lim is an Associate Professor of English Literature in the Department of English, Linguistics & Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is the author of "Narratives of Diaspora: Representations of Asia in Chinese American Literature" (2013); "John Milton, Radical Politics, and Biblical Republicanism" (2006); and "The Arts of Empire: The Poetics of Colonialism from Ralegh to Milton" (1998). He also co-edited the collection "The English Renaissance, Orientalism, and the Idea of Asia" (2010). His latest book, "Shakespeare and the Theater of Religious Conviction in Early Modern England," is scheduled for publication by Palgrave Macmillan in October 2023.