I am a historian of law, empire, and identity in China and East Asia. I am interested in how Chinese people and political regimes contended with social, legal, and political structures and traumatic events. I am also interested in how digital tools help us understand the structure and patterns of Chinese social life. I have served as a Limited-Term Assistant Professor and Director of Taiwan Studies Group at Simon Fraser University, Canada (2016–2019), and I have participated in a digital-humanities project “Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern China” at Aix-Marseille Université, France, that is sponsored by the European Research Council (ERC). I have research backgrounds in Taiwan, Canada, China, France, and the United States. I am the Secretary of the International Society for Chinese Law and History (ISCLH).

Edited Volumes

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

Refereed Journal Articles and Book Chapters

“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