I have broad and interdisciplinary research interests in modern Chinese history, the history of science and technology, energy and natural resource extraction, intellectual history, and global history. These interests informed both my first and second books and my various collaborations with sociologists, geographers, and other social scientists. In the historical profession, my research is at the cutting edge of scholarship combining an interdisciplinary and transnational/transimperial approach. My research has been supported by Henry Luce Foundation/ American Council of Learned Societies Program in China Studies and prestigious residential fellowships at the National Humanities Center (2016-17) and the Institute for Advanced Studies (2020-21). I was selected for the fifth cohort of the Public Intellectual Program run by the National Committee on US-China Relations (2016-18) and the Wilson Center China Fellowship (2023-24). I have also published articles for a wider public in venues such as Nature, inference.com, and newspaper op-eds.
My first book, Empires Coal: Fueling China’s Entry into the Modern World Order, 1860-1920, narrates the history of how Chinese views of natural resource management underwent a major change as a result of the late Qing engagement with imperialism and science. The book argues that modern Chinese views of strategic mineral reserves and natural resources developed in the last decades of the Qing dynasty. Each chapter addresses a different facet of this change in worldview, and, as a whole, the book demonstrates that by the end of the nineteenth century China and the West had converged in a crucial measure of modern, industrialized states: the theory and exploitation of natural resources, particularly fossil fuels. Related to the topic of the book, my article, “The Search for Coal in the Age of Empire,” was published in the flagship journal for the historical profession, The American Historical Review, in April 2014.
My second monograph, Birth of the Geopolitical Age: Global Frontiers and the Making of Modern China (Stanford University Press, September 2023), traces the global history of the frontier in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on China. The global history approach provides a new perspective on the continuities and evolution of the construction of Chinese territoriality from the late nineteenth century to the People’s Republic of China after 1949, as well as the intellectual influence of geographical and geopolitical discourse from around the world. Research for the book took me to over fifteen archives and library special collections in China, Taiwan, the United States, Germany, and Britain.
I am currently co-writing, with Fa-ti Fan, Science in the Making of Modern China, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press. I am also one of the editors for the Oxford Handbook of Transimperial History volume, with an international group of historians: Cyrus Schayeh, Daniel Hedinger, Nadin Hee, and Damiano Matasci to be published in 2026.
I served as Chair of the East and Inner Asia Council (EIAC) and board member of Association of Asian Studies (AAS) (2022-24); president of the Historical Society for Twentieth Century China (2022-2024); editorial of board of Isis, the flagship journal of the History of Science Society (2022-2024); and the editorial board of the Journal of Chinese History (2024-2026).
As director of Humanities Center, I am leading Lehigh’s initiative on Humanities AI.