Newly Appointed Chair Professors at Lingnan University

Lingnan University is pleased to announce the appointment of four Chair Professors for its Humanities, Business and Social Sciences Programmes of studies in the new academic year.

Professor Richard L. Davis – Chair Professor of History
Head, Department of History
BA, MA (SUNY Buffalo); MA, PhD (Princeton)

Professor Richard L. Davis has been appointed as Chair Professor of History, and also as Head of the Department of History.

Professor Davis is native to Buffalo, New York (U.S.A.), and earned the Ph.D. from Princeton University's East Asian Studies Department, where he worked with the late James T.C. Liu and Frederick W. Mote.

Professor Davis was a student of Chinese history for the middle period (A.D. 900-1300). His interest in Chinese Studies began with language and politics and later shifted to the history of China. His books, reflecting the intermingling of History and Sinology, include Court & Family in Sung China (Duke University Press, 1986), Wind Against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China (Harvard University Press, 1996), and most recently an extensive translation of Ouyang Xiu's Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (Columbia University Press, 2004). His book-length contribution to the Cambridge History of China, Vol. 5 is forthcoming.

Before joining Lingnan, he taught for seventeen years in the History Department at Brown University, five years at Duke, in addition to two-year teachings stints as visiting professor at Middlebury College in Vermont and National Chung-cheng University in Chia-yi, Taiwan. His teaching interests include late imperial China, comparative cultural history, and comparative historiography, in addition to advanced work in his specialty.


Professor Michael Arthur Firth – Hong Kong Economic Journal Chair Professor of Finance
BS (Metro. State); MA, MBS (Colorado); MPhil (Warwick);
MSc, PhD (Bradford); FCA; FCPA; CTA (ATII); CFA; CIIA, MHKSI

Professor Michael Arthur Firth has been appointed as Hong Kong Economic Journal, Chair Professor of Finance.

Professor Michael Firth started his career as an accountant with Poulsom & Co, a firm of chartered accountants. Subsequently he worked as an auditor for Whinney Murray (Ernst and Young) and as an investment analyst at Phillips and Drew (UBS Phillips and Drew). He has professional qualifications in accounting and finance and earned his PhD at Braford University. Prof. Firth's first academic post was at the University of Stirling. Subsequent professional appointments were at Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Colorado, Lingnan University, and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he held the post of Chair Professor of Accounting and Finance. He has held visiting positions at University of British Columbia, University of California at Los Angeles, China-Europe Management Institute (Beijing), China-Europe International Business School (Shanghai), Norges Handelshoyskole, Helsinki School of Economics, and Nanyang Technological University. Prof. Firth's research interests cover issues in accounting, auditing, economics, and finance.

Professor Firth is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, a Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, a Chartered Financial Analyst, a Certified International Investment Analyst, and a Member of Hong Kong Securities Institute.

Professor Firth has written extensively in the areas of accounting, economics, and finance and has published in leading academic journals. He has also published seven books in accounting and finance.


Professor Richard Basil Freadman – Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor of English
BA (Brandeis); DPhil (Oxon)

Professor Richard Basil Freadman has been appointed as Tong Tin Sun Chair Professor of English.

Professor Freadman was born and received his school education in Melbourne, Australia. He earned his Honors degree from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, and his DPhil from the University of Oxford. After this he taught in the English Department at the University of Western Australia until 1991 when he took up the Chair of English at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

Professor Freadman's early research focused on the English and American novel, particularly the work of George Eliot and Henry James. Most of his recent research and publication has been in the field of 'life-writing', a domain which includes autobiography, biography, oral history, diaries, journals and other forms in which the individual life-story is the fundamental unit of expression and analysis. During his first semester at Lingnan he will teach a course entitled 'Writing your Life" which is designed to help students write autobiography.

In addition to academic and other articles, Professor Freadman has published six books: Eliot, James and the Fictional Self: A study in Character and Narration (Macmillan, 1986); On Literary Theory and Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Encounter, co-edited with Lloyd Reinhardt (Macmillan, 1991); Re-thinking Theory: A Critique of Contemporary Literacy Theory and an Alternative Account, co-authored with Seumas Miller (Cambridge, 1992); Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Theory, Philosophy, co-edited with Jane Adamson and David Parker (Cambridge, 1998); Threads of Life: Autobiography and the Will (Chicago, 2001); Shadow of Doubt: My Father and Myself (Bystander Press, 2003). His most recent book, This Crazy Thing a Life: Australian Jewish Autobiography, will be published by the University of Western Australia Press in 2007.

Professor Freadman believes that enjoyment, conversation and commitment to fine accomplishment are the keys to university life. He says of Lingnan: "I find Lingnan's vision of on-campus student life, and of rounded liberal arts education, very appealing. I am looking forward to learning about Hong Kong life-stories – the lives people lead, the narratives they craft about their lives – through my teaching at Lingnan".


Professor Jesus Seade– Sydney S W Leong Chair Professor of Economics
BS (National, Mexico); MA (El Colegio, Mexico);
B.Phil, D.Phil (Oxon)

Professor Jesus Seade has been appointed as Sydney SW Leong Chair Professor of Economics. A Mexican national, Professor SEADE earned his B.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees in Economics from the University of Oxford, where he wrote a D.Phil. thesis on the theory of optimal taxation. At Oxford, an article published by Professor Seade in the leading journal in the field before graduating from Oxford remains an important point of reference thereon, and the area remained central to his subsequent work.

After Oxford, Professor Seade spent the first twelve years of his professional career at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, and developed secondary research interests with influential theoretical publications in other fields, in particular industrial organization, while continuing to develop as a tax theorist. He was soon promoted to become one of the youngest Professors of Economics in that country.

In 1989 Professor Seade became Mexico's Ambassador to GATT and chief negotiator for the Uruguay Round. In 1993, he was invited to become Deputy Director General of GATT, and subsequently Deputy Director General of WTO until 1995. Professor Seade joined the International Monetary Fund as Assistant Director in the IMF's Policy Department in 1998. He then moved in late 2001 to the Fund's Fiscal Affairs Department as Senior Advisor. In this capacity he provided extensive technical assistance to countries around the world, on issues covering the range of fiscal policy and practice, from tax and expenditure policies to budget systems and administration.

In all those positions Professor Seade has supervised and been heavily involved in both policy research and training, but he declares himself to be keen to now resume his formal academic life, both as a teacher and in research. "The rest of my career was practice on the issues I wish to teach and to study", he says. "But my heart has always been in academia".

In joining Lingnan University Professor Seade realizes his desire to return to a hot and active academic environment. And in so doing, he hopes to bring together the teaching and analytical skills he developed earlier on as an academic, with his experience of the real world of designing, negotiating, and deciding on economic policies.