Student Affiliates

Sarah Bramao-Ramos’s dissertation project “The Task of the Manchu Translator” examines the practice and culture of translating from Chinese into Manchu in Qing China (1636-1911). She aims to excavate the un-read history of many Manchu language translations.

Research interests: Manchu;Read More

Ted Hui’s dissertation centers on the Mongol Empire’s rule of China and asks how the cultural boundaries of the empire were perceived and represented from the 13th to the mid-14th century. He examines a diverse range of textual materials composedRead More

Xiaoxuan Li is writing her dissertation on textual representations of the body in early medieval China. She considers how earlier traditions of reading the body as a source of knowledge were challenged and re-written between the third and sixth centuries.Read More

Lei Lin’s dissertation, entitled “The Limits of Empire: The Qing-Gurkha War, China’s Borderlands and the Trans-Himalayan Paradigm, 1788-1850.” She hopes to provide a new angle for understanding the empire-building of late imperial China and for conceptualizing the geography of historyRead More

Anne-Sophie Pratte is working on her dissertation, “Mapping Colonial Mongolia in the 19th Century: Qing Cartography and the Transformation of the Steppe.” She focuses on maps as a technology of empire in Qing Mongolia, arguing that the succession of mappingRead More

Dylan Suher examines how the influence of television, film, and digital media transformed the conception of literature as a medium in the PRC. He centers his research on China’s “long 1990s” and investigates how, during this period, the function ofRead More

Yung-chang’s dissertation is entitled “Coping with Triviality: Note-Taking, Gossip-Telling, and the Problem of Information in Song China (960-1276).” This project tackles the ways in which Chinese literati processed daily information and promoted their reputation. He focuses particularly on Song notebooksRead More

Fangsheng Zhu’s dissertation, “Access, Selection, and Exit: Getting Education in Chinese Cities,” investigates institutions in getting education in contemporary China. He hypothesizes that institutions determine which parental characteristics matter with regard to the overall amount of educational inequality and thatRead More

Yuan-Heng Mao’s dissertation project examines the formation and transformation of Jiangxi literati networks and their ideas of state and local society throughout the Yuan (1271-1368) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties, with a particular interest in central Jiangxi.

Research interests: late imperialRead More

Saul Wilson’s dissertation is on the politics of urban development in Chinese municipalities. His research seeks to understand how urban development became a question of distributive politics and how different Chinese locales developed different models of distributive politics.

Research Interests: MunicipalRead More

Mengdie Zhao’s dissertation “Shades of Justice: Imagining Law and Legal Culture in Late Imperial Chinese Literature” examines the popular critiques of law and justice in literature and drama from the 16th century to the early 20th century in China. SheRead More

Josh Freedman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government at Harvard. His research focuses on technocracy, bureaucracy, and the politics of science and expertise in contemporary China. Before coming to Harvard, he lived and worked in Beijing andRead More

Huanruo Wang will travel to China for a year of intensive fieldwork to investigate contemporary China’s media infrastructure through the lens of what she calls “the pan-documentary.” As part of this project, she will employ ethnographic participant observation within multipleRead More

Jongsik Christian Yi has been awarded the Desmond and Whitney Shum Fellowship to conduct field research in Beijing and Lanzhou for his dissertation project on the history of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine (TCVM, 中兽医) in the Maoist period. Yi willRead More

Austin Strange’s dissertation examines how elite domestic politics and political legitimacy shaped late imperial China’s foreign economic policies, including its tribute and trade relations in East Asia. His work also explores how similar dynamics persist in contemporary international politics. Additionally,Read More