Rowena Xiaoqing He

Rowena Xiaoqing He (何曉清) is a China specialist and historian of modern China. She is interested in the nexus of history, memory, and power, and their implications for the relationship between academic freedom and public opinion, human rights and democratization, and youth values and nationalism. Her first book, Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), was named Top Five Books 2014 by the Asia Society’s China File. The book has been reviewed in the New York Review of Books, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New Statesman, Spectator, Christian Science Monitor, China Journal, Human Rights Quarterly, and other international periodicals. Her research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, the National Humanities Center, and the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas Austin.  

Dr. He is passionate about teaching. Her teaching has been featured by both international and campus outlets including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Gazette, Harvard Magazine, and Wellesley News. She received the Harvard University Certificate of Teaching Excellence for three consecutive years for the Tiananmen courses that she created. She joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2019 and received the Faculty of Arts Outstanding Teaching Award in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, she was denied a work visa to return to her position as an Associate Professor of History. She has also taught at Wellesley College and Saint Michael’s College. 

Dr. He publishes and speaks widely beyond the academy. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, The Wall Street Journal, and The Nation. She has been a keynote speaker for the Canada Human Rights National Symposium, testified before a U.S. Congressional hearing, and delivered lectures for the U.S. State Department and the Canada International Council. Her scholarly opinions are regularly sought and she has been interviewed by ABC (Australia), ABC (U.S.), Al Jazeera, The Associate Press, BBC, CBC, CNN, CTV, Financial Times, Globe and Mail, Guardian, Inside Higher Education, Le Monde, NPR, NBC, New York Times, Reuters, Time, Times Higher Education, The Wall Street Journal, and other international media outlets. She was designated among the Top 100 Chinese Public Intellectuals 2016. 

Born and raised in China, Dr. He received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.

Research interests: Modern and contemporary Chinese history, society, and politics; interdisciplinary inquiries into the nexus of history, memory, and power, political socialization, youth values, and social change, and their implications for citizenship, identity, human rights, and democracy; the 1989 Tiananmen Movement and its aftermath; intellectual freedom and censorship; patriotic education and post-’89 student nationalism; Oral history and life history.