Dr. Edgar Wickberg Academic Prizes

In 2007, the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of B.C.(CCHSBC) established the Dr. Edgar Wickberg Scholarships in Chinese Canadian History. Named after Professor Edgar (Ed) Wickberg (1927-2008), professor emeritus UBC and founding president of CCHS, two scholarships are available to current students in post-secondary institutions in British Columbia who have demonstrated promise of research achievement in the history of the Chinese in British Columbia.
  • Undergraduate Prize - $1000
  • Graduate (or Professional Program) Prize - $1000

Each year the CCHSBC makes two scholarships available to current students in post-secondary institutions in British Columbia who have demonstrated promise of research achievement in the history of the Chinese in British Columbia. Typically, one scholarship will be awarded to an undergraduate student and one to a student in a graduate or professional programme. The winner(s) will also receive a complimentary ticket for the winner and a guest to our annual spring celebratory dinner.​

Deadline: February 28, 2025 (including all supporting documentation)
Application Procedures, Rules & regulations
  1. Students must be continuing in a graduate or professional programme, continuing in undergraduate studies, or transferring to a related graduate or professional programme such as Education, Graduate Studies, Law, or Archival, Library and/or Museum Studies. In case of uncertainty about the relevance of the programme, the judges’ decision shall be final. Applicants will be assigned to the undergraduate or graduate/professional category according to their status at the time of application.
  2. Evidence of promise may take the form of a thesis, term paper, research paper, electronic recording, photo collection or other presentation. Work in progress may be considered. If the evidence is based on a publication, thesis or major research paper, the applicant should submit a self-contained chapter, précis, or article suitable for publication which should not exceed 15,000 words. In the case of an electronic recording, video, website or similar presentation, it should be sufficiently concise that it can be listened to or viewed in not more than ten minutes. It should also be submitted in a generally accessible format.
  3. Subject areas include history, economics, literature, anthropology, visual arts, sociology, geography, social sciences but are not restricted to those fields. Some preference may be given to research that draws on oral history, uses Chinese language resources, and/or involves members of Chinese Canadian communities.
  4. Applicants need to arrange to have one professor who is familiar with their work email a letter of recommendation to the selection committee. In the subject line, please indicate name of prize applicant. 
  5. In a letter of no more than 500 words accompanying their application, students should indicate continuing interest in the history of the Chinese in British Columbia.
  6. At their discretion, the judges may alter the amount of the scholarship, divide the funds in case of ties, award only graduate or undergraduate scholarships, or make no award. The decisions of the judges, after ratification by the Board of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia, are final. 
  7. Applications and supporting material should be submitted via the form linked below.
  8. Further information may be obtained by e-mailing [email protected]
Previous Winners
2008 Undergraduate Winner - Tylor Richards
Congratulations to 2008 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winner Tylor Richards. He was recognised for his critical research papers in Chinese Canadian history. At the time of receiving this prize, Tylor was a 3rd year history student at the University of Victoria. Since then, he continued with graduate studies at UVic with an MA thesis ​"Re-Imagining Gernanness: Victoria's Gernams and the 1915 Lusitania Riot"​. After 2012, Tylor moved to Germany and works as a teacher in the Black Forest region.
2008 Graduate Winner - Joanna Wong
Congratulations to Graduate Scholarship Winner Joanna Wong (University of Victoria) was recognized for her research and book on food and family history, A Wong Family Feast.She has since been working in Beijing as principal of Flow Creative, an award-winning advertising agency with offices in Beijing, Vancouver, Hong Kong and LA. She is an Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada Media and Action Canada Fellow.
2009 Undergraduate Winner - Angela Wong
Congratulations to 2009 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winner Angela Wong. She was recognised for her BA Honours thesis ​"Finding the Sino-Vietnamese: The Historic Process of the Identification of the Sino-Vietnamese in Vancouver"​. At the time of receiving this prize, Angela was an undergraduate student at UBC. Since then, she completed her MA in Asia Pacific Policy Studies at UBC, received her Law degree from the University of Calgary. She is current practicing law in Toronto as a community advocate.
2009 Graduate Winner - Hong Jiang
Congratulations to 2009 Graduate Wickberg Prize winner Hong Jiang. She was recognised for her Master's thesis ​"A Socio-historical Analysis of Chinese Heritage Language Education in British Columbia"​. At the time of receiving this prize, she was a Master's student at UBC. Since then, she received her Bachelor in Education (Secondary School Mathematics and Mandarin) from UBC, and moved to Palo Alto, California with her husband and family.
2010 Undergraduate Winners - Jennifer yip & Al Yoshizawa
Congratulations to 2010 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winners Jennifer Yip and Al Yoshizawa. They were recognized for their video documentary ​"Vancouver's Chinatown: Past, Present, and Future"​. Since receiving this prize, Jennifer continued as a Research Assistant on the Chinese Canadian Stories Project (UBC), and Al first studied in Montreal before returning to Vancouver to produce documentaries and instruct in video productions.
2010 Graduate Winner - Woan-Jen Wang
Congratulations to 2010 Graduate Wickberg Prize winner Woan-Jen Wang. She was recognised for her research on the archival and record keeping practices  of the early Chinese Canadian community. At the time of receiving this prize, Woan-Jen was a graduate student at UBC's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Since then, she went on to attend seminary school in Taiwan.
2011 Undergraduate Winner - Courtney Loftus
Congratulations to 2011 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winner Courtney Loftus. She was recognised for her video project on expensive housing markets endangering families living in Chinatown. Since receiving this prize, Courtney graduated with a degree in International Relations with a minor in History. Following her graduation, she served as a Junior Analyst for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, and the Corporate Social Responsibility Coordinator at Gold Corp.
2011 Graduate Winner - Justin Tse
Congratulations to 2011 Graduate Wickberg Prize winner Justin Tse. He was recognised for his research in geographies of religion in the Pacific region and his dissertation ​"Religious politics in Pacific space: grounding Cantonese Protestant theologies in secular civil societies"​. At the time of receiving this prize, Justin was a Ph.D candidate in Human Geography at UBC, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle.
2012 Undergraduate Winner - Lilienne Zen
Congratulations to 2012 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winner Lilienne Zen. She was recognised for her English Honours thesis ​"The Poetics of Offering: An Approach Towards Chinese Canadian / Indigenous Relations"​. Upon receiving this prize, Lilienne became a graduate student at University College London's Centre for Publishing in the Department of Information Studies.
2012 Graduate Winner - Rosanne Sia
Congratulations to 2012 Graduate Wickberg Prize winner Rosanne Sia. She was recognised for her MA thesis "Making and defining intimate spaces: white waitresses policed in Vancouver's Chinatown cafes" where she explored the ban on white waitresses in Vancouver's Chinatown in 1937. At the time of receiving this prize, Rosanne planned to continue with her doctoral studies at UCLA with the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity.
2013 Undergraduate Winner - Katrina Lo
Congratulations to 2013 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winner Katrina Lo. She was recognised for her MA in English Literature thesis "(re)defining the 'eh': reading a colonial narrative". Since receiving this prize, Katrina completed her MA in English Literature and Bachelor of Education (Secondary School) at UBC. She has also opened her own educational tutoring company.
2013 Graduate Winner - Shelly Ikebuchi
Congratulations to 2013 Graduate Wickberg Prize winner Shelly Ikebuchi. She was recognised for her Ph.D dissertation "At the hearth of the nation: the woman's Missionary Society and Victoria's Chinese Rescue Home 1886-1923". At the time of receiving this prize, Shelly was chairing the Department of Sociology at Okanagan College, Kelowna. Shelly has a research interest in the convergence of race, gender, and religion and the links to discourses of domesticity.
2015 Undergraduate Winner - Kathryn Siemens
Congratulations to 2015 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winner Kathryn Siemens for her research on Harry Hastings, a British-Chinese resident of Victoria who, at the time of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, strongly advocated for equal treatment of Asians. At the time of the award, Siemens was a fourth year Honours History student at the University of Victoria.
2016 Undergraduate Winner - Christy Fong
Congratulations to 2016 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winner Christy Fong for her research on the 1968-1979 barbecue meats protests of Vancouver’s Chinatown, specifically on the intersection of racialised legislation, community activism, and oral histories. Christy recently graduated from the University of British Columbia with a B.A. in English Literature (Honours), and a minor in Asian Canadian & Asian Migration Studies. She co-produced a documentary - Under Fire: Inside a Chinese Roasted Meats Shop in Vancouver.
2018 Undergraduate Winner - Angela Ho
Congratulations to 2018 Undergraduate Wickberg Prize winner Angela Ho for her collaborative, community based project The Chinatown Sound Mapping Project. This provides a platform for users to listen to and share different experiences in and with Chinatown through the perspective of sound. Angela is a fourth-year UBC student studying Geography. 
2018 Graduate Winner - Caimen Yen
 Congratulations to 2018 Graduate Wickberg Prize winner Caimen Yen for her directed studies "The Life of Yen Bow Quon: A Personal History of Early Chinese Women in Canada"​. Yen Bow Quon is Ciamen's great-grandmother, and her life history provided an alternative perspective and challenges the traditional narrative surrounding early Chinese immigration and settlement in Canada. 
2020 - Graduate Winner - Denise Fong
​Description Coming Soon
2021 - ​Retired Colonel Chris Weicker
​Weicker's Master's thesis, Secret Warriors in the Pacific War: Chinese Canadians and the Special Operations Executive, 1944-45, at the University of Victoria's Department of History is a unique study examining declassified files from the British National Archives in London, UK, which uncovers the unrecognized contributions of the largely unknown service of the 145 Chinese Canadians loaned to the Allied Powers during World War II. 
2022 - undergraduate winner - andrew sandfort-marchese
The Prize awards outstanding students who have demonstrated promise of research achievement in the history of the Chinese in British Columbia. Andrew's research as part of his honours thesis "Papers, Please: Broker Battles, Human Rights, and the Illegal Immigration Raids of 1960" uncovered important insights into the RCMP raids on Chinese Canadian communities in 1960. The examination into so-called "illegal" immigration by the police demonstrated that the Chinese continued to face racial harassment at the time, despite people's families often being in Canada for generations. These raids showed how the state continued to question Chinese Canadian belonging long after the repeal of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act and being given the franchise provincially and federally in 1947. His study was thorough, well-researched, and very informative of what racialized Canadians experienced at the time.
2023 - Undergraduate winner - Vanessa lee
​Vanessa Lee – 3rd year Bachelor of Arts/interdisciplinary (UBC) – her project, “Chop Suey: An Amalgam”
is a creative/critical research piece on the history of Chop Suey in Canada. It includes ten original
posters, a 1350-word artist statement and reflection, and bibliography.
2023 graduate winner - june chow
​June Chow – completing Masters in Archival Studies UBC – June’s submitted paper used the Yucho
Chow project as a case study describing the formation of a community archive and discussed its place
within larger social and political movements in Chinatown and in Chinese Canadian communities
and histories