I am a historian specializing in law, empire, and identity in China and East Asia. My research focuses on how Chinese people and political regimes navigated social, legal, and political structures, as well as traumatic events. I also explore law and violence in Taiwan within the broader context of East Asian history and investigate how digital tools can enhance our understanding of the structure and patterns of ordinary people’s social lives.

From 2016 to 2019, I served as a Limited-Term Assistant Professor and Director of the Taiwan Studies Group at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Between 2020 and 2022, I was a Lecturer (Chargé de cours) at Aix-Marseille Université in France, where I participated in the European Research Council (ERC)-sponsored digital-humanities project “Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern China.” I also participated in the digital humanities project “Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping the Spaces of Modern East Asian History,” coordinated by David Ambaras and Kate McDonald, where I employed digital-humanities methods to explore the spatial history of water in Wenzhou.

My research experience spans Taiwan, Canada, China, France, and the United States. I have served as the Secretary of the International Society for Chinese Law and History (ISCLH) from 2014 to 2024. I am a co-editor of the forthcoming volume, Routledge Companion to Chinese Legal History, co-edited with Thomas Buoye. Currently, I am working on my monograph, Justice for the Empire: Summary Execution and Legal Culture in Qing China.

Edited Volumes

Routledge Companion to Chinese Legal History, edited by Weiting Guo and Thomas Buoye (London & New York: Routledge, forthcoming).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

“Interview of Stevan Harrell: Studying Taiwan before Taiwan Studies,” in 《冷戰下的「臺灣研究」：北美人類學家訪問紀錄》: Lengzhan xia de “Taiwan yanjiu”: Beimei renleixuejia fangwen jilu (Studying Taiwan before Taiwan Studies: American Anthropologists in Cold War Taiwan), edited by Derek Sheridan, Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, and Tseng Wen-liang (Taipei: Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, 2024), 343–438.

“The Logics of Atrocities: A Local Official and the Small Wars in Taiping China, 1851–1864,” Small Wars & Insurgencies, 34, no. 3 (2023): 693–724.

“A Journey into the Wilds: Law, Crimes, and Everyday Justice in the Eyes of a Local Official, 1820–1868,” in Everyday Justice in Ming and Qing China, edited by Pierre-Étienne Will and Jérôme Bourgon (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

“The Expedient Death Penalty in Late Imperial China,” in Routledge Companion to Chinese Legal History, edited by Weiting Guo and Thomas Buoye (London & New York: Routledge, forthcoming).

“The Diary of Zhang Gang: An Excerpt,” in Translating the Occupation: The Japanese Invasion of China, 1931–45, edited by Jonathan Henshaw, Craig A. Smith, and Norman Smith (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2021), 170–189.

“The Portraits of a Heroine: Huang Bamei and the Politics of Wartime History in China and Taiwan, 1930–1960,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review (UC Berkeley) 9, no. 1 (2020): 7–39.

(In Chinese) “爭訟人生: 《張棡日記 (1888–1942)》所見清末民國時期地方社區調解人的生活” [張一民譯 Zhang Yimin trans.]: Zhang Gang riji (1888–1942) suojian Qing mo minguo shiqi defang shequ tiaojieren de shenghuo (Living with Disputes: Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942) and the Life of a Community Mediator in Late Qing and Republican China), in 《法律史譯評 (第五卷)》: Falüshi Yiping [Legal History Studies], Vol. 5 (Shanghai: Zhongxi Book Company, 2017), 275–304.

“A Different Kind of War: Summary Execution and the Politics of Men of Force in Late-Qing China, 1864–1911,” in Global Lynching and Collective Violence: Vol. 1: Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, edited by Michael J. Pfeifer (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2017), 34–77.

“Social Practice and Judicial Politics in ‘Grave Destruction’ Cases in Qing Taiwan, 1683–1895,” in Chinese Law: Knowledge, Practice, and Transformation, 1530s to 1950s, edited by Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin (Leiden: Brill, February 2015), 84–123.

“Living with Disputes: Zhang Gang Diary (1888–1942) and the Life of a Community Mediator in Late Qing and Republican China,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 24, no. 2 (2013): 218–62.

Book Reviews

Review of The Making of the Modern Chinese State, 1600–1950 by Huaiyin Li. The Journal of Asian Studies, 80, no. 2 (2021): 458–60.

Review of Legal Lessons: Popularizing Laws in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1989 by Jennifer Altehenger. Pacific Affairs, 99, no. 3 (2020): 639–41.

(In Chinese) “接觸帶” 中的跨文化政治: “Jiechudai” zhong de kuawenhua zhengzhi (Review of Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics by Li Chen). Yuanzhuo 圓桌, 4, no. 2 (2018), 477–89.

Review of Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State by Mary E. Gallagher. Pacific Affairs, 91, no. 3 (2018): 575–77.

Review of “Smuggling, State-Building, and Political Economy in Coastal China, 1927–1949” (Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2013) by Philip Thai. Dissertation Reviews (2016). http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/13922.

Review of The Mandate of Heaven and the Great Ming Code by Yonglin Jiang. H-Law and H-Net Reviews (2015). http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=42799.

Review of What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China by Tobie Meyer-Fong. Civil Wars, 16, no. 3 (2014): 373–76.

Translation

Kenneth Pomeranz, “對晚期帝制時代中國經濟的反思：1730年前後–1930 年間的發展、崩解和衰退”: Dui wanqi dizhi shiqi Zhongguo jingji de fansi (Re-thinking the Late Imperial Chinese Economy: Development, Disaggregation, and Decline, circa 1730–1930), in 《當代西方漢學研究集萃》: Dandai xifang hanxue yanjiu jicui (Western Scholarship on Chinese History), vol. 2, “中古史”: Zhonggu shi (History of the Middle Period), edited by Patricia B. Ebrey, Ping Yao, and Leo K. Shin (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2012), 377–438.

Thomas Buoye, “18 世紀山東的殺害親人案件: 貧窮, 絕望與訟案審理中的政治操作” 18 shiji Shandong de shajai qinren anjian (Killing the Family in Eighteenth-Century Shandong: Poverty, Despair and Judicial Politics), in 《明清法律運作中的權力與文化》: Ming-Qing falüyunzuo zhong de quanli yu wenhua (Power and Culture in the Practice of Ming-Qing Law), edited by 邱澎生 (Peng-Sheng Chiu) and 陳熙遠 (Xi-Yuan Chen) (Taipei: Lianjing, 2009), 255–74.

2022 Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Modern China Workshop Grant

2020 Esherick-Ye Family Foundation Grant

2019 Center for Chinese Studies (Taiwan) Research Grant for Foreign Scholars in Chinese Studies

2017–2019 David See-Chai Lam Centre Grant, Simon Fraser University

2013–2014 Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation Doctoral Fellowship

2008–2011 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Canada Graduate Scholarship

2008–2009 Harvard University, Harvard-Yenching Library Travel Grant

2004 Taiwan Judicial Reform Foundation, Thesis Award