Ian Inkster

Personal Background
Inkster was born in Warrington, Lancashire, England. August 4th, 1949.
He was raised in Khartoum, Edinburgh and Lowestoft.
He is now married, with 5 children.
Education
Inkster was educated in England. He did his undergraduate in The University of East Anglia in Economics ( BA: Hons. Econ) 1970 , and later PhD at The University of Sheffield in Economic History (1976) - He was elected as a member at FRHS, London in 1985.
Career
Present positions
Professorial Research Associate at center of Taiwan studies at SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London.
And Professor of Global History in the Department of International Affairs, Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Inkster is also an Editor of History of Technology since 2001.
Editorial board
Past positions
Academic Work
Inkster’s academic works cover a wide range of varieties, as a historian he considers the relations between different fields that intertwine with each others- including science, technology, education and the historical process of industrialization. Early on from his doctoral thesis at Sheffield (Studies in the Social History of Science in England 1790-1850) to his books, Science and Technology in History, An Approach to Industrialisation (Macmillan, London and Rutgers University Press, 1991) and Technology and Industrialisation, (Variorum, London, 1998), he focused on the influences of technology in history. It is worth to note that Inkster used very unique approach in his books, which is systematic and accumulative in combining comparative methodology and social science concepts. By doing so, he created a research-based and secondary literature creative synthesis.
This style is recognized by Science vol. 256, April 14th 1992, Louis Galambos, Johns Hopkins.
“An extremely valuable comparative history of the central processes that created our modern world. Well written if necessarily dense, the book deserves to reach a broader audience than the one for which it was targeted. It can be read with profit by anyone who is interested in the development of the economically significant institutions of science and technology during their formative centuries.”
In recent years, Inkster has expanded his interest to comparative and global history. By integrating global history with history of technology and comparative global industrialization with reference to his main research areas - Britain and Japan- he also continuingly devoted his long-term interest elsewhere in Australia, India, and Taiwan/China.
Apart from global history, one of Inkster’s highlight in 2004 is the public lecture he gave at Cambridge: The Winners’ Edge. Information and Intellectual Property in the Making of Industrial Modernity. The preparation for the lecture resulted in writing on a brief global history monograph.
In short, Inkster has been forging linkages between technologies and intellectual property, the social production of knowledge, and industrialization in history, and to wed this with the newer interpretations of comparative and global history.
Present works and Prospects
Inkster has recently published in Taiwan history and anthropology. The primary projects on Taiwan, China and global history includes two in-progress books:
Firstly, THE CAMPHOR WARS. China, Japan and Indigenous Taiwan in the Conflicts of World History.
-which is about the impact of British-based technology on indigenous Taiwan in the 19th century within a global political perspective
Secondly, Selling the Nation and Eating Savages: Taiwan in the Colonizing World of the 1890s.
-the book is a study of Taiwan in the 1890s as a focal point of global processes in history, which is entirely novel in its emphasis on the determining influence of the great powers but especially Britain, the subject as an aspect of the Chinese loss of status and empire, and the Japanese gaining of same, and the way in which these elements conditioned relations between Han Chinese, Hakka, indigenous peoples, westerners and Japanese within this small island setting.
Both of the two books above are based on earlier research in Japan from the 1970s, as well as research and teaching at Wenzao, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Including field trips around Taiwan’s eastern mountains and also researches at British Library, London.
Media
Inkster has been covering numerous academic works in the media since 1980. He appeared and wrote scripts for Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio programs. The contents covered Australian patenting, history of Australian science and medicine, and history of technology. In 1989-90 he acted as the academic consultant for Film Australia. The film series under the tittle-Roads to Xanadu, which is on European-Chinese comparative history of cultural and technological development was released in Australia, UK (BBC), USA (WGBH Boston), Europe and Asia.
He also had talks about Indian economic/technological history and development problems on All-India Radio and New Delhi.
In Australia, Inkster engaged in articles and interviews for several major TV programs and radios The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Mirror, local radio in Victoria and NSW, as well as PM (National), 2GB, and afternoon main ABC news. After returning the UK, he appeared in BBC: The Afternoon Show, Laurie Taylor.
His most recent media work in Taiwan can be found here: Hermia Lin ‘Academic experts urge active participation in shaping cultural policy’, Taiwan News, 26 May 2010 p. 3 headline, on my Keynote Lecture on cultural policy and urban innovation patterns to the Egret Cultural and Educational Foundation, National Library of Taiwan, Taipei.
Moreover, his present monthly column is in Taipei Times, commenting on recent key issues based on his knowledge in global history, East Asia, and international political economy.
Latest column: January, 2013:
Education must find its direction (link below)
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2013/01/09/2003552088/1

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