About

About

Maastricht University’s heritage consists of over 250,000 historical works that were acquired by the university when it was founded. Parts of the collection are travel logs on China. Maastricht University Library invites you to experience contemporary China from an historical perspective. Within the programme of the 2016 lustrum year, Maastricht University organises a trip for two students to China for three weeks. These two students will document their trip with a blog, comparing their experiences with the travel logs of 17th century Jesuits in China.

This expedition aims to provide insight into contemporary Chinese culture while acknowledging the specific nature in which 17th century Jesuits observed the country within their own travels. The respective students will thus embark on a journey retracing the steps of missionaries described in the China Illustrata. This treatise of encyclopedic breadth on the customs and culture of 17th century China was written by Athanasius Kircher, a well- known Jesuit scholar. The expedition does not only serve its purpose as an interactive travel log, but also aims to provide comparative insight into the nature in which people have observed distant cultures generations ago and how such perspectives have evolved over time.

Samantha Jenkins

Samantha JenkinsSamantha is a 21 year old British UCM student majoring in Biochemistry.

Since attending the United World College of the Pacific in Canada she has become an avid traveller and loves to experience new cultures and people. She has always had an interest in journalism and her love for film making started with a documentary film making course in Canada. She has pursued this field since alongside her scientific studies.

Samantha left home at 15 and since has lived in countries all across the globe and loves to explore new places. As a kayaking instructor she loves the outdoors and takes every opportunity to be in the wilderness, on the ocean or up a mountain. In the future Samantha hopes to pursue her scientific studies further and someday dreams of working for the National Geographic!  

     

Angelica Giombini

Angelica GiombiniAngelica is a 20 years old Italian girl from Rome. She is currently at her second year of European Law at Maastricht University. 

As a young girl she traveled and lived around the world together with her parents a doctor and an anthropologist, always discovering new cultures. On her own she continued this passion by travelling alone for two months in Peru or walking 1000 km from France to Spain along the Walk of St James. 

Angelica has a great passion for humanistic studies and is very interested in history, art and oriental civilization. She speaks 4 languages and loves to engage in adventures!

Her biggest dream is to hug a baby panda!