Aliya Abdukadir Ali
Supervisor: Professor Andrew Marsham
Thesis topic: Networks of power in Iran and Iraq under the Umayyads
Research Summary:
Aliya Ali is a currently undertaking her DPhil under the supervision of Professor Andrew Marsham and Professor Amira Bennison.
Aliya's DPhil is an important study of three revered figures of Islamic history: ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān AH 24-36/644-656CE, ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib AH 36/656 CE and Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān AH 41-52/661-680 CE. She compiles a large database consisting of detailed biographical information of governors and their families. These figures are important because of their legacies. They shaped the religious and political landscape of the Modern Middle East and they are a point of contention for several factions and sects that have emerged since their deaths.
The main source for her project is the work of al-Ṭabarī (d. 311/923) who was a celebrated historian and scholar known for writing Tārīkh al-Rusul wa-l-Mulūk (the History of Prophets and Kings). She also consults the works of the ʿAbbāsid historian al-Balādhurī (d. 279/892) who authored the famous Futūḥ al-Buldān (Book of Conquests) and Ansāb al-Ashrāf (Genealogies of the Nobles).1 Another two important reference pieces are al-Zubayrī and Ibn Saʿd’s Kitāb Nasab Qūraysh and Kitāb Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr as well as the works of Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ otherwise known as Ibn Khayyāṭ al-ʿUṣfurī. Zakkar. Ibn Khayyāṭ's work, esepcially the Tārīkh (History) is one of the most important extant sources on the study of early Islamic governance.
Aliya previously completed her MPhil in Islamic Culture and History at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in 2019-2020 and completed her BA in History at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Mohammed Ahmed
Supervisor: Professor Andrew Marsham
Thesis topic: Early Muslim-Jewish Relations through Late Texts: An Analysis of Al-Tabari's Tafsir on the Medinan Period
Research Summary:
Mohammed’s PhD research focusses on tafsīr/exegetical literature. Analysing the role of Jews in tafsīr literature can uncover the key method in which attitudes towards Jews (presented as a knowledgeable but misguided people) develops within the Islamic tradition. To this end, his research evaluates three key tafsīr works, Muqātil (the earliest known tafsīr), al-Ṭabarī (the first encyclopaedic tafsīr) and Ibn Kathīr (the most popular tafsīr currently), in order to examine developing religious attitudes towards Jews. His main thesis posits that Jews were a 'non-exemplar' group in Islamic literature (and tafsīr literature more specifically). In other words, Qur'anic exegetes used Jews as a literary scapegoat in order to demonstrate 'what not to do' to the Islamic audience. Jews fulfilled the role of being sufficiently similar to Muslims (in their monotheistic and prophetic beliefs), but also sufficiently different from Muslims (in their rejection of the prophecy of Muhammad) in order to fulfil this role of the ‘non-exemplar’. Mohammed’s research has thus far won the Bernard Lewis Prize, Marguerite Plate and the Gibb Memorial Trust Award, and has been noted for its originality and lone voice in an untapped niche of early Islamic studies.
Forthcoming publications include: Muslim-Jewish Harmony: A Politically Contingent Reality, Islam and Judaism: Religious Identity in the Early Islamic Era, Judaeo-Islamic Scriptural Heritage: 'Isma and Sharaf in Ibn Kathir's Stories of the Prophets.
Dana Al Shahbari
Supervisor: Dr Charis Olszok
Thesis topic: In search of May Ziadeh: Recovery through Archives
Research Summary:
Dana’s research focuses on the recovery of May Ziadeh, an overlooked Lebanese-Palestinian writer and literary salon hostess from the early twentieth century. She aims to highlight Ziadeh’s significant contributions to al-Nahda movement, or the Arab Renaissance, while also revisiting and challenging the narrative of madness associated with Ziadeh’s name. Dana further examines the impact of madness on the judgment of Ziadeh’s intellectual value while tying it to the association of madness to women throughout history. Her research fosters a tradition of studying and translating overshadowed Arab women writers, and its methodology draws from different fields of Arabic literature, rhetoric, translation, archives, as well as Nahda and postcolonial studies.
Saleh Alkhulaifi
Supervisor: Dr Assef Ashraf
Thesis topic: The modern history of the Gulf and the emergence of Gulf states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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Qingyang Bai
Supervisor: Dr Heather Inwood
Thesis topic: Flowers in the Crevice: Misty Poetry, Literary History Writing, and the Emotional Individual in 1970s’ and 1980s’ China
Research Summary:
I attempt to understand two broad questions about Misty Poetry and the literary ‘atmosphere’ that surrounded it. First, by scrutinising both the content of the poems and the historical context behind their popularisation, I aim to determine the reasons behind the young generations’ choice of this particular genre of poetry as their language after the Cultural Revolution. This study seeks to uncover what informed the emergence of Misty Poetry in late 1970s and 1980s China, and the social, cultural, and emotional mechanisms through which these literary works achieved such popularity. Second, upon understanding that the current mainstream historical interpretation of 1980s China’s literary scenes is selected, written, and narrated by scholars who participated in the Misty Poetry movement, we examine how they incorporate Misty Poetry into modern Chinese literary history and the ways in which their chosen narrative impacts the cultural, political, and emotional spheres of contemporary China.
James Bejon
Supervisor: Dr Aaron D. Hornkohl
Thesis topic: Semantico-Prosographical Connections in Profane Names in the Hebrew Bible
Research Summary:
My thesis will examine the names of the people referred to in the Hebrew Bible and will seek to identify and analyse patterns in the apparent semantic content of those names. Of particular interest to me are case where the semantics of a name can be shown to be related to the circumstances of its bearer. Names from the Near East more broadly are also considered.
Paulius Bergaudas
Supervisor: Professor Andrew Marsham
Thesis topic: Remembering Caliphate of ‘Uthmān and ‘Alī. Theory and Method of Classical Sunni Historiography
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Thomas Booth
Supervisor: Professor Mikael Adolphson
Thesis topic: Understanding the Causes and Motivations of the Tokusei Protests 1428-1467.
Research Summary:
The tokusei protests (lit. virtuous governance) were a series of rural protests that occurred throughout the Kinai region of Japan between 1428 and 1467. Rural communities marched on Kyoto and Nara demanding a clearance of personal debts and a reduction in annual tax; when refused, they destroyed the property of temples and moneylenders. Military intervention by the shogunate against the protesters ignited a series of uprisings throughout the region. The origins of these protests have exclusively been understood in structural terms: socio-economic deprivation, political opportunity and the mobilising force of the packhorse drivers have been highlighted as the principle causes of the protests. This methodology has downplayed considerations of agency: what motivated, rather than stimulated, the rural population to rise up? Using insights from social psychology, this project aims to shed light on the identity of the tokusei protester and question how they articulated and interacted with the context of fifteenth century rural Japan.
Lina Brüssel
Supervisor: Professor Geoffrey Khan
Thesis topic: The Medieval Karaite Transcriptions of Hebrew into Arabic Script Preserved in the Firkovitch Collections
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Yusuf Chaudhary
Supervisor: Dr Assef Ashraf
Thesis topic: Islamic Intellectual History in the Mongol Ilkhanate (1258-1358); Theological Works of Rashid al-Din al-Hamadhani; Ilkhanid Intellectual Networks
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Madhulika Chebrol
Supervisor: Professor Vincenzo Vergiani
Thesis topic: Critical analysis of the confluence of Mīmāṃsā hermeneutics and Dharma texts
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Critical analysis of the confluence of Mīmāṃsā hermeneutics and Dharma texts in order to evaluate whether the former had the effect of restricting the meaning and rules related to dharma rules through exclusive use of specific interpretative techniques; understanding how much influence and of what kind Mīmāṃsā interpretative techniques had on restricting injunctive texts to certain specific meanings to the exclusion of others. This research is specific to the duties and rights of women and different castes.
Xinyi Chen
Supervisor: Professor Yaron Peleg
Thesis topic: Literary encounters of Hebrew and Arabic, the case of Mifgash-Liqa’
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James Dawson
Supervisor: Professor Hans van de Ven FBA
Thesis topic: Third Front Construction
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John Donegan-Cross
Supervisor: Professor Roel Sterckx FBA
Thesis topic: A Study of the Literary and Material Culture of Early China through the lens of the fenghuang 鳳凰
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Rashaad Eshack
Supervisor: Professor Barak Kushner
Thesis topic: Japanese migrant, Nikkei, diasporic identity in the Americas
Research Summary:
Rashaad’s research examines the ways that education impacts Japanese diasporic identity construction in Japanese-American, Nikkei, communities. He aims to develop a transnational, historical dissection of the international, national, and community forces that influence the formation of education systems available to Japanese-American children, and the ways in which those schools impact migrant identity. To that end, and in order to transcend a bilateral US-Japan focus in Japanese diaspora studies, he incorporates sources from the US, Japan, and Latin America.
Ahmed Ezzat
Thesis topic: History and politics of modern law in Egypt
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Ankur Desval Fehrani
Supervisor: Professor Christine van Ruymbeke
Thesis topic: Tradition, Imitatio (Mimesis) and Innovation: Exploring the Development of Eskandar-Namah Genre in the Persianate World via a Study of the Eight Extant Poetical Alexander Romances
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Frederick Feilden
Supervisor: Professor Laura Moretti
Thesis topic: From A to B and Back Again? Picturebook Adaptations in Nineteenth-Century Japan
Research Summary:
Freddie is looking at strategies of adaptation in 19th-century Japanese popular literature, with a particular focus on picturebook genres such as yomihon and gōkan. Through analysing the transformations in content and format, he aims to clarify the connections between narrativity, temporality, text and image on the page - ultimately as a means of considering what these creative rewritings may tell us about the relationship between commercial publication and the evolution of readership from late Edo through into the Meiji period.
Andrew Fischer
Supervisor: Professor Mikael Adolphson
Thesis topic: Trusted Turncoats: Loyalty and Lordship in Sixteenth-Century Japan
Research Summary:
Andrew’s research project is concerned with loyalty and lordship in sixteenth-century Japan. His primary subjects are the Hosokawa, who served under the Ashikaga shoguns as well as all three of the so-called “unifiers,” Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Andrew is a Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholar and completed his undergraduate studies in Japanese Language and Culture at Washington University in St. Louis. He also studied at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama as a Nippon Foundation Fellow.
Maria Gajewska
Supervisor: Professor Andrew Marsham
Thesis topic: Networks of Trust in the First Global Economy
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Tian Gao
Supervisor: Professor Laura Moretti
Thesis topic: Exploring a Uniquely Portable Magic: A Cognitive approach to Japanese Reading Materials for Children
Research Summary:
This research investigates a selection of 'mamehon', commercially printed ‘picturebooks’ packaged for children from late Edo period to early Meiji period, in order to explore how these texts functioned as cognitive tools for enculturation and socialisation within the social context. By focusing on the study of the epistemic, entertaining and educational function of these texts, Tian intends to foster a better understanding of children and childhood in the late Edo period and the Meiji period.
Jiankang Gao
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: Development of Chinese Clan Associations in Southeast Asia
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Shannon Gilbert
Supervisor: Dr Heather Inwood
Thesis topic: Textual Authority and the Body in Modern Chinese Fiction
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Ilay Golan
Supervisor: Dr Noga Ganany
Thesis topic: The Religious Tradition of Overseas Sailors in Late Imperial China
Research Summary:
My dissertation explores the religious traditions of pre-modern Chinese overseas merchants. Before China transitioned to modern shipping, Chinese seafarers sailed junks across far-reaching sea routes spanning the entire South China Sea and beyond for hundreds of years. In doing so, they developed unique religious beliefs, such as a distinct pantheon of deities and shipborne rituals, as they charted the seas as a sacred geography. The mariners’ traditions manifest through maritime writings, rutters, and ritual handbooks from the Song to the Qing eras, and their influence is apparent in modern-day ceremonies as well. Examining this broad range of sources shows a consistent and apprehendable tradition that reflects the historical beliefs and perceptions of Chinese maritime society as also adds to our understanding of modern religion in China.
Chae Kyoun Ha
Supervisor: Dr John Nilsson-Wright
Thesis topic: Japan and Korea's Regional Diplomacy vis-à-vis Southeast Asia during the Cold War
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Ruby Haji Naif
Supervisor: Dr Paul Anderson
Thesis topic: Syrian Immigrants in Germany: Negotiating Citizenship Configuration Through Engaging in Public Visibility.
Research Summary:
My research examines how Syrians in Germany negotiate social inclusion through participation in public spaces as activists, artists, content creators, performers, and stand-up comedians. It explores how modes of public visibility, both virtually and on the ground, including arts, performance, and stand-up comedy, enable them to contest racial, social, and/or religious marginalisation and assert their cultural citizenship within Germany. The research explores how Syrians navigate the dynamics of visibility and belonging in Berlin's public discourse. It looks at how alternative public spaces such as stand-up comedy clubs, art exhibitions, and cultural hubs serve as arenas to negotiate prevailing German national imaginaries concerning Muslim and Middle Eastern minorities’ position and belonging within Germany. It asks how individuals, such as Syrians, who are marginalised by mainstream German citizenship respond to it and what strategies they employ while drawing upon specific resources and opportunity spaces. Why do some Syrians seek to achieve public visibility through comedy, music, art, and other means? Is the primary objective to be included in the German social contract, or are there broader aspirations behind their engagement in these forms of expression?
Choongil (Peter) Han
Supervisor: Dr John Nilsson-Wright
Thesis topic: North Korea’s Unification Policy
Research Summary:
Peter’s research interest is on the Korean unification question with a specific focus on North Korea’s unification program in the 1980s. His PhD research investigates how international, domestic and South Korean situation influenced Pyongyang’s approach toward unification. Peter is a Gates Cambridge scholar and serves as a member of the National Unification Advisory Council UK.
Monica F He
Supervisor: Dr Heather Inwood
Thesis topic: The censored transmedia storytelling of queer narratives in contemporary China
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Christoph Hess
Supervisor: Professor Hans van de Ven FBA
Thesis topic: Institutions and Small-Scale Industry in China: War, Revolution and Reform
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Natsuha Kataoka
Supervisor: Professor Laura Moretti
Thesis topic: Text à la Mode: Cross-pollination of Fashion and Literature in Early Modern Japan
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Armaghan Khosravi Nia
Supervisor: Professor Christine van Ruymbeke
Thesis topic: The Work and Theoretical Views of Nima Yushij
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Mi Jin Kim
Supervisor: Dr Nuri Kim
Thesis topic: A Woman’s Work: Affective, Emotional, and Spiritual Labour of Korean Shamans and Women in Colonial and Postwar Korea
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On I Lam
Supervisor: Professor Barak Kushner
Thesis topic: Sewing the Red Flag: The Inter-Party Relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Japanese Communist Party (1950-1958).
Research Summary:
My doctoral project researches the inter-party relationship between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) in the 1950s by investigating the 1950 issue within the framework of the history of Sino-Japan relations, the international communist movement and the Cold War. The study aims to explore details of the CCP-JCP interactions and consider if there existed a pattern of interactions. Furthermore, it reveals the roles of the United States and the Soviet Union in consolidating and splitting the two parties and explores the heritages the Cold War left to East Asia and the world.
Annabel Langdon
Supervisor: Dr Nuri Kim
Thesis topic: The realities of Cheju Haenyŏ colonial-era activism and its evolving memory in contemporary Korea.
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Mary Lascurain
Supervisor: Dr Aaron D. Hornkohl
Thesis topic: Initial Clause Element as a Predictor of Word Order in Biblical Hebrew
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Yutong Li
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: The Cultures of Nature at the Beijing Zoo, 1906 - 1976
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Ko-Hang Liao
Supervisor: Professor Barak Kushner
Thesis topic: Rethinking Defeat: Japan, Chiang Kai-shek and the 'White Group' in Taiwan, 1949-1969
Research Summary:
Ko-Hang’s research analyses the history of the ‘White Group’ – Chiang Kai-shek’s secret Japanese military advisory group consisting of former imperial Japanese officers – as part of what might be loosely termed two consecutive waves of militarisation which shaped Taiwan’s modern trajectory. First, as part of Japan’s mobilisation of its militarised domains in the late-1930s and early 1940s; and second, as part of the Nationalist government’s Total Defence Mobilisation system after 1949. Ko-Hang’s concerns are twofold: first, the impact (or stickiness) of the Japanese imperial military ideas on the development of post-1949 Republic of China military culture and ethos; and second, how was the overlay of Imperial Japanese Army culture forged on the drill grounds of Sagamihara and the battlefields of China in the 1930s became ingrained in aspects of Taiwanese politics, economy, society, and culture? Put simply, the aim of this work is to trace the genealogy and impact of the ‘White Group’ over time and to argue for its centrality to the Nationalist nation-building and developmental state forged in Taiwan after 1949.
Tsz Ki Christy Liu
Supervisor: Professor Hans van de Ven FBA
Thesis topic: Nationalism, Morality and Accommodating the Enemy: Food Access in Central China during the Second World War
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Shoufeng Liu
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: Mechanisms of Economic Practices in Contemporary Chinese Popular Religion: A Case Study from Mount Jingzhong
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Di Liu
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: Pristine Dignity in Troubled Times: The Connoisseurs and Connoisseurship of Ming Furniture in Peking from 1930 to 1950
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Silvia Lodi
Supervisor: Dr Saussan Khalil
Thesis topic: Teaching and Learning Vocabulary in the Arabic (on-line) classroom through technology-supported material (TBC)
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Fuyuan Luo
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: Working title: Beyond Polarities: The (Re)making of Tibetan Buddhism in Contemporary Chengdu
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Mia (Ye) Ma
Thesis topic: Court, Monastery and Workshop: Refashioning Water-moon Avalokiteśvara Paintings in late Goryeo Korea and Yuan China.
Research Summary:
Mia Ye Ma received her B.A. in Art History from University of St-Andrews and M.A. in Art and Archaeology from SOAS. She is broadly interested in Dunhuang art, 11th-14th century East Asian Buddhist paintings, and the social, cultural and intellectual exchanges among China, Japan and Korea during the Song and Yuan period.
Giorgia Maffioli Brigatti
Supervisor: Professor Christine van Ruymbeke
Thesis topic: Musk and Roses in Persian Art and Poetry: a Smell Culture Approach to Art History in Safavid and early Qajar Iran (1500-ca. 1896)
Research Summary:
My research focuses on the relevance of odours, particularly perfumes, in Safavid (1500-1722) and early Qajar Iran (1789- ca 1896). The aim is to reassess the Iranian history of art through the sense of smell: an essential ingredient of Persian art, life and culture from the Safavid to the Qajar epoch. My interdisciplinary approach to the theme broadens our critical understanding of the theories and practices related to the sense of smell. I study different sources, from medical manuscripts to poetry, from paintings to carpet colouring techniques, from garden designs and botanical knowledge to the conception of kingship and mystical understandings of the cosmos. Persian culture had a different approach to smells and perfumes to our contemporary time, they enriched everyday life with numerous poetic and medical associations. Through my analysis of Persian sources, I demonstrate how odours and olfactants are a fundamental part of the study of Iranian art and its history.
Samuel Martin
Supervisor: Dr Charis Olszok
Thesis topic: Reading the Oil City and the Emergence of the Urban Nomad in Saudi Arabian Film and Literature
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Marc Michaels
Supervisor: Professor Geoffrey Khan
Thesis topic: Towards a better understanding of the scribal manual Sefer Tagin.
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Juan Moreno Gonzalez
Supervisor: Professor Andrew Marsham
Thesis topic: Interwoven languages: the paralell blossoming of Arabic and Hebrew grammatical traditions in al-Andalus
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Akihito Nakanishi
Supervisor: Professor Mikael Adolphson
Thesis topic: Culture as Currency: Political Economy of Artistic Practice by Daimyo in Pre-modern Japan
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Ruo Fan (Claire) Ping
Supervisor: Dr Heather Inwood
Thesis topic: Gendering the Dongbei “storm”: region and masculinities in contemporary Chinese culture
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This thesis contextualises a trending cultural phenomenon, the so-called Dongbei Renaissance, within existing research on masculinity in contemporary China, changing formations of which have been closely linked to negotiations with marketisation, globalisation, individualisation, and neoliberal development during post-Reform transitions. By exploring the significance of the Dongbei Renaissance for debates on gender and vice versa, the study diverges from current analytical angles in scholarship to unravel interlinked narratives of marginalised masculinities and region that provide grounds for discerning broader ideological shifts in China and evoking parallels with wider post-industrial experiences in global neoliberal societies.
Phra Kiattisak Ponampon
Thesis topic: Dunhuang Manuscript Pelliot chinois 2078: A Study of Meditative Praxis and Visionary Experiences
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Peichao Qin
Supervisor: Professor Roel Sterckx FBA
Thesis topic: Pyromancy and Epigraphy in Late Shang China: A Study of the Hopkins Collection of Oracle Bones in Cambridge University Library
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Theo Rossi
Thesis topic: The transformation of mental healthcare institutions and conceptions of mental illness in 19th-century Egypt
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Risha Roy
Supervisor: Dr John Nilsson-Wright
Thesis topic: The legacies of empire and the emergence of multiculturalism in Japan and South Korea
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Risha’s research explores the post-World War II history of liberalism in Japan and South Korea. She examines in particular how the legacies of the Japanese Empire have influenced the emergence and framing of multiculturalism in both countries.
Gabrielle Russo
Supervisor: Professor James Montgomery
Thesis topic: The Turkic military guard in third/ninth-century Arabic praise writing
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Research Summary: Gabrielle’s research examines praise writing for the Turkic military elite in the third/ninth century, with reference to al-Jāḥiẓ’s (d. 255/868–9) epistle Manāqib al-Turk (“The Merits of the Turks”) and the poetry of al-Buḥturī (d. 284/897). This project considers how and why praise literature for the Turkic military was composed and approaches questions on the nature of court power and military patronage under the ʿAbbāsids.
Samir Saad
Thesis topic: Politics and legal reform in the Late Ottoman Empire, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, 1876-1976
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Moe Sasakawa
Supervisor: Dr Victoria Young
Thesis topic: The Posthuman Subjects in Contemporary Japanese Literature: Nonhuman Animals in the Works of Furukawa Hideo, Oyamada Hiroko, Hosaka Kazushi
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Polina Serebriakova
Supervisor: Professor Mikael Adolphson
Thesis topic: Petals of paulownia: sources of aristocratic legitimacy for warrior leaders in Medieval Japan.
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The apex of the Muromachi shogunate is usually attributed to the late fourteenth – first half of the fifteenth century and is strongly associated with the rule of three Ashikaga shoguns: Yoshimitsu, Yoshimochi, and Yoshinori. Each of them went down in history as a warrior leader whose political success was owed much to military force. However, non-military frameworks of subjugation, such as Buddhist ritual, courtly ceremonial, and diplomatic protocol, that allowed the Ashikaga shoguns to establish their legitimacy amongst the elites, are often being overlooked. By analysing these political rituals, this dissertation investigates how the Ashikaga warrior leaders acquired recognition and authority equal to the top-tier aristocracy of Medieval Japan.
Iqan Shahidi
Supervisor: Dr Assef Ashraf
Thesis topic: The concept of decline and decadence in the writings of the contemporary intellectuals of Iran.
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Reyhan Silingar
Supervisor: Professor Barak Kushner
Thesis topic: Mobilising Monarchy: Emperor Hirohito and Japan’s Imperial House Diplomacy, 1921-1975
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Reyhan’s research explores the transwar and transnational framing of Japan’s “imperial house diplomacy” through a political and diplomatic history of Emperor Hirohito's, as well as other imperial family members', diplomatic missions across the world. Drawing on newly opened archives, memoirs, and primary source materials in Japan, Britain, the U.S., the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Turkey, she aims to contribute to rethinking the historical evolution of the symbolic monarchy, the postwar persistence of monarchical diplomacy, and the place of the ex-imperial nobility in the new, postwar Japanese state.
Chuah Meng Esmond Soh
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: The Nine Emperor Gods Festival in Indonesia: Histories, Communities, and Identities
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Hershini Soneji
Supervisor: Professor Vincenzo Vergiani
Thesis topic: Polemical Rhetoric in the Post-Bhāṣya Vedānta Tradition
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Nathanel Stawski
Supervisor: Professor Yaron Peleg
Thesis topic: Conservatism in Early German Zionist Thought.
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Jun Tham
Supervisor: Professor Mikael Adolphson
Thesis topic: A history of spirit pacification as a mentality and an ideology
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Spirit pacification was a practice that reinforced the ruler’s role as protector of the polity from all threats, including the supernatural, and in Japan, also served to put blame for societal ills on the ruler’s enemies. Due to questions of terminology within and between the fields of scholarship on spirit pacification in China and Japan, the persistent and important link between spirit pacification practice and regime legitimation in the years c.1350-1650 has been overlooked. By setting aside terminology and redefining spirit pacification according to the core features of the practice, the proposed dissertation seeks to write a history of spirit pacification as a mentality and an ideology. In doing so, it has two aims: to investigate how spirit pacification played into regime legitimation, and how its role changed, but did not disappear entirely across the late medieval and early modern periods; and to explore the existence of a common, regional imaginary regarding the dead in East Asia.
Mengyuan Tian
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: The contemporary cult of the Yellow Emperor in Henan
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Jie Wang
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: The Arabic Language and Transnationalism amongst the Chinese Muslims
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Hsiaoching Wang
Supervisor: Professor Boping Yuan
Thesis topic: L2 Acquisition of Wh-indeterminants in Mandarin by English and Korean Speakers.
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Mirko Winckel
Supervisor: Professor Mikael Adolphson
Thesis topic: Sacral institutions navigating secular landscapes: Tōji in the Japanese Middle Ages
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Jingting Xiang
Supervisor: Professor Boping Yuan
Thesis topic: Definiteness and Specificity in L2/L3 Mandarin Grammars
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Chuanlong Xiang
Thesis topic: Sino-Korean Trade in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
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Zhenyu Xu
Supervisor: Dr Heather Inwood
Thesis topic: A Brand-New Panther: The Animality of Modern Chinese Poetry
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Jie Yang
Supervisor: Dr John Nilsson-Wright
Thesis topic: Morality in East Asian Politics
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Jie’s research explores whether morality plays a role in state interaction with one another in the East Asian region; and if it does, what are the specific moral principles and whether they are different with moral principles discussed in conventional (Western) International Relation Theory.
Sheung Chun Jonathan Yeung
Supervisor: Professor Barak Kushner
Thesis topic: Sino-Japanese interactions in the context of early 20th-century Chinese students in Japan
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Jonathan intends to investigate how nationalistic identities developed amongst a Chinese student community in Tokyo of the early 20th century. By examining student publications as well as official documents and records, Jonathan hopes to place the students’ explorations of identity in a global context, and elucidate the impact of the students’ experience of Japan on wider events happening in China.
Andreas Nabil Younan
Thesis topic: The history of parliamentary life in 1970s and 1980s Egypt
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Gennie Zhang
Supervisor: Professor Adam Yuet Chau
Thesis topic: Goddess Unveiled: Performance, Kinship, and Femininity beyond the Lady of Linshui
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Gabriella Wangmu Zhaxi
Supervisor: Dr John Nilsson-Wright
Thesis topic: China-North Korean Relations
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China-North Korean Relations; Northeast Asia security dynamics; North Korea’s propaganda strategy; US-China relations
Mariah Zhong
Supervisor: Professor Barak Kushner
Thesis topic: The “Asia Problem” in Postwar East Asia: Negotiating Postimperial Boundaries between Japan, PRC/China and ROC/Taiwan
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Miao Zhou
Supervisor: Dr Lucy Xia Zhao
Thesis topic: Anaphora Resolution in L2 Chinese
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