RESEARCH INTERESTS
Comparative state formation, early-modern China, early-modern Britain, history of political economy
DISSERTATION
The Politics of State Finance in Seventeenth-Century China and England
BIOGRAPHY
I am a doctoral candidate studying the history of the state in modern China and Western Europe. I have fundamental research interests in comparative histories of institutions and political processes and the histories of political economy and political thought. I began graduate studies at Chicago in September 2020.
My dissertation is a comparative study of fiscal politics and state formation in seventeenth-century Ming-Qing China and Stuart England. I argue for the period as a crucial moment of crisis and transformation in each polity’s developmental trajectory, using materials drawn from 21 archives in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Britain. I examine the fiscal-political origins of China and England’s general crises, as well as parallel conflicts over fiscal policy and authority, in the decades before the Ming-Qing transition and English Revolution. I then compare the fiscal and political dynamics of state breakdown and reconstruction, exploring institutional paths not taken in both early-Qing China and Restoration England. I conclude with a comparative account of the divergent settlements achieved in each polity by century’s end, which shaped the terms of fiscal politics and state-financial institutions for centuries to come: the emergence of a precociously extractive, public fiscal state in post-1688 England, and the consolidation of a distinctly autocratic and self-limiting tax state in China after 1683.
My research has been supported externally by fellowships from the Economic History Association, the Huntington Library, and the Beinecke Library, and internally by the Nicholson Center for British Studies, the Center for East Asian Studies, and the Center for International Social Science Research. At Chicago I have coordinated the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop and the Empires Forum and served as a student representative to the Deans Advisory Council and History Graduate Student Association. Before coming to Chicago, I studied history, Chinese literature, and classics at Yale University, graduating in 2019. In AY 2019-20 I was a Richard U. Light Fellow at National Taiwan University, where I studied Classical Chinese.
Please feel free to contact me with questions about common intellectual interests or about studying history at Chicago.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Computing techniques; data; early modern Britain; political economy; science; capitalism.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Twentieth-century Germany and Poland; history and memory; Holocaust and its aftermath; Cold War; space and place; material culture
DISSERTATION
Within Space We Feel Time: The Creation of Authenticity in European Memorial Sites to the Nazi Past, 1945-2004
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Twentieth-century US history; labor, gender, and social reproduction; inequality; history of capitalism; social policy and the welfare state
DISSERTATION
Helping Others: The Making of the American Social Worker
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Economic History of Late Imperial and 20th-Century China; History of Capitalism; History of Global Trade; Social History of Technology (Currency Minting and Metallurgy); Sino-South American History
DISSERTATION
"Qing Copper Cash, Counterfeiting, and International Copper and Silver Trade: China's Monetary System in the Long 19th Century"
BIOGRAPHY
My research delves into the reciprocal influences of state, society, and economy in modern East Asia from the 1700s to the 1970s, with additional interests in transnational history and the history of capitalism. My Master's thesis at the University of Chicago in 2017, entitled "The Decline of The Yunnannese Copper Industry (1800-1850)," examined the decline of Yunnan's copper mining industry, which served as the backbone for the Qing Empire's minting. Through my research, I posited that the international trade of copper played a crucial role in determining not only the viability of China's domestic copper production but also the stability of China's monetary market.
The subject of copper continues to be a central theme in my ongoing PhD dissertation research. I focus on the impact of global circulation of copper ore and cash coins on Qing China's monetary system and economy, at both macro and micro levels. Specifically, I am intrigued by the reasons behind the rampant counterfeiting of Qing copper cash and its role in the monetary system's descent into a downward spiral between 1800 and 1860.
My previous research at UChicago included a study of taxation and land reform in North China, which examined how the Chinese state developed its statistics, intensively quantifying the rural economy and remarkably expanding their fiscal capacity in the 1930s and 1940s. Before joining UChicago, I received my B.A. in Economics from the School of Finance of Nankai University, and my M.A. in History from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
When not immersed in academic research, I indulge in my love for food, honing my skills as a cook and satisfying my taste buds as a diehard foodie. Furthermore, I am owned by two cats. Photography is another hobby that I am keen to explore, always seeking to improve my craft and capture captivating moments.
DISSERTATION
"Making Prison Law in the United States, 1966-1980"
AWARDS
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Medieval cultural and intellectual history; premodern numeracy; media and technology; visual culture and materiality; Iberian Peninsula
AWARDS
NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant for a project co-led by Adrian Johns titled "Digital Diagrams: Embodied Numeracy and Knowledge Visualization in the Middle Ages"
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Modern Europe with emphasis on Germany; cultural history; music, sound, and performance studies; gender and sexuality; nationalism; transnationalism
DISSERTATION
Music beyond Artwork and Nationalism beyond the Nation: German and Austrian Musical Mass Entertainment, 1867-1914
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Atlantic Slavery; Legal History; History of Urban Policing; Carceral Studies; Slavery and Abolition; History of Capitalism; Race and Racialization; Critical Theory; Digital Humanities
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Modern Jewish history; 19th and 20th century Eastern Europe; liberalism, reformism and the Left; empire and revolution; Yiddish literature; Russian literature and film; philanthropy and social welfare; gender and sexuality; disability studies