People in East Asian studies

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University Teaching Officers

Professor Mikael Adolphson

Research interests

Social structures, ideologies, mentalitée, religious institutions, legal history, historical documents and international trade in Medieval Japan.

Research supervision 

Having supervised graduate students in a range of fields, including premodern and modern Japanese history, premodern literature as well as Buddhism, Professor Adolphson welcomes enquiries from motivated graduate students and young scholars from across the world.  

Professor Adam Yuet Chau

Research interests

Social and cultural transformations in contemporary China; Chinese religions, especially their social aspects (primarily popular religion); ritual theories; cultural forms; ‘text acts’; ‘hosting’; ‘modalities of doing religion’; subjectification; generating concepts based on native practices and categories (e.g., red-hot sociality); material culture; fieldwork locations include Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi Province) and Taiwan.

Research supervision

Professor Chau is on sabbatical leave during 2025-26. He will consider MPhil and PhD applications for 2026 entry. Professor Chau welcomes students who work on Chinese religious and ritual life; social and cultural change in modern/contemporary China; Chinese environmentalism(s); China and the overseas Chinese and other topics relating to social anthropology of contemporary China.  

Dr Noga Ganany  

  • University Associate Professor in the Study of Late Imperial China
  • Email: ng462@cam.ac.uk 

Research interests

Chinese history, premodern Chinese literature, religious practice in China (including Buddhism and Daoism), print culture and history of the book in China, and popular culture. I am particularly interested in the interplay between literature and religion in late-imperial China (primarily during the Ming and Qing dynasties). I am also interested in early-modern book culture, hagiographical writing, and travel and pilgrimage in China.  

Research supervision

Dr Ganany welcomes graduate students interested in exploring late-imperial cultural history, Chinese literature, book culture, and Chinese religions.

Dr Mihye Harker

Dr Harker teaches undergraduate Korean and does not normally offer postgraduate supervision.

Professor William J. Hurst  

Research interests 

Politics in China and Indonesia. I have published books on labour and law and society. I am completing new projects on land regimes in Mainland China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and on China’s international relations. I publish regularly on urban governance, rural politics, contentious politics, and political economy.  

Research supervision

Professor Hurst is eager to work with exceptional students who take on big challenges and substantively important topics, spend significant energy and time extracting and gathering original data at close range, and deploy new concepts, theories, and ideas to reshape fields including politics, sociology, law, development, through area studies scholarship. 

Dr Heather Inwood  

  • University Associate Professor in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture
  • Email: hi208@cam.ac.uk 

Research interests

Chinese contemporary genre fiction and poetry; popular, fan and folk cultures; internet culture and society; media studies; sociology of literature and culture.

Research supervision

Dr Inwood is happy to supervise postgraduate students in topics relating to her research on modern and contemporary Chinese literature, culture and media, especially digital and popular culture.  

Note to postgraduate applicants for 2026-27 entry: I am able to make a small number of PhD offers for Michaelmas 2026 entry and welcome applications from MPhil and PhD students with the relevant academic backgrounds and proposed topics.

Dr Miki Kawabata

Dr Kawabata is a senior member of the Japanese teaching staff, teaching Japanese language to undergraduates at all levels. She does not normally offer postgraduate supervision.

Dr Nuri Kim  

  • University Associate Professor in Korean Studies  
  • Email: nk588@cam.ac.uk 

Research interests

History of modern Korea; the history of knowledge, historiography and historical memory; new religious movements; Family History, Cultural History, History of Games.  

Research supervision

Dr Kim welcomes MPhil and PhD applications related to modern Korea.

Ms Erina Kirisawa

Ms Kirisawa teaches Japanese language at all levels to undergraduates and does not normally offer postgraduate supervision. 

Professor Barak Kushner, FBA

Research interests

Modern East Asian history - including Japan, Taiwan, and China - in particular the wartime, postwar imperial dissolution of the Japanese Empire, and the Cold War in East Asia, as well as history of war crimes, memory politics, and the pursuit of justice. I also have a growing interest in Korea’s role within the Japanese empire.  

Research supervision

Professor Kushner is on sabbatical leave from October 2024 to September 2026 but welcomes applications for the PhD programme with a start in the fall of 2026. Potential applicants should contact Professor Kushner directly for queries about 2026 admission.  

Professor Kushner is pleased to supervise MPhil and PhD students interested in imperial and postwar Japanese history, 20th century Japan-Taiwan, as well as Sino-Japanese relations, the history of the Cold War in East Asia, and history of war crimes in East Asia.

Professor Laura Moretti  

Research interests

Popular literature and culture, visual culture (including ukiyo-e prints), graphic narratives, game studies, and book history in early modern Japan (17th-19th century). She works a range of topics including transmedia storytelling, adaptation, canon-making, intervisuality, playfulness, humour, satire, metafiction, didactic prose, and medicine in popular culture. She also runs the Mitsubishi Corporation Summer School in Early Modern Japanese Palaeography.

Research supervision

Professor Moretti welcomes graduate students interested in Japanese premodern and early modern literature, encouraging also projects that investigate early modern Japanese culture broadly, including visual culture and woodblock prints; book history and/or textual scholarship in Japan; Japanese palaeography and calligraphy.

Professor John Nilsson-Wright  

  • Fuji Bank Professor of Japanese Politics and the International Relations of East Asia  
  • Email: jhs22@cam.ac.uk  

Research interests

Japanese politics and international relations; Cold War history and especially US foreign policy in East Asia particularly towards Japan and the two Koreas; North and South Korean domestic politics and foreign policy; diplomatic history and strategic studies.

Research supervision

Professor Nilsson-Wright is happy to supervise graduate students who wish to work on East Asian politics, international relations and diplomatic history, particularly with reference to Japan, North and South Korea and US relations with Northeast Asia. I typically receive a large volume of applications for our MPhil and doctoral programmes and try to liaise with potential applicants before our formal deadlines. However, if you do not receive a direct reply from me, do still consider submitting your application via the online process and I look forward to reviewing your application once it reaches me.

Dr Brigitte Steger  

  • University Associate Professor in Modern Japanese Studies  
  • Email: bs382@cam.ac.uk   

Research interests

Dr Brigitte Steger specialises in Japanese society, with emphasis on the cultural history and anthropology of things we take for granted, such as the cultural and social embeddedness of seemingly natural, bodily matters and of daily life. In particular, she has done research on sleep and on time in both contemporary and Heian period Japan, on issues of cleanliness and hygiene (from household waste disposal, household cleaning and wider questions of environment and sustainability to childbirth), and on life in tsunami evacuation shelters post 3.11, as well as on gender issues.

Research supervision

Dr Steger welcomes inquiries from talented young scholars to work under her supervision. She is willing and able to supervise a wide range of topics related to Japanese contemporary society. Please contact her by e-mail prior to application and submit a draft research proposal (ask for guidelines). 

She is on sabbatical leave during the academic year 2025-26 but will answer enquiries about postgraduate research (MPhil, PhD) for start in October 2026.  

Professor Roel Sterckx FBA  

  • Joseph Needham Professor of Chinese History, Science and Civilization  
  • Email: rs10009@cam.ac.uk   

Research interests

Classical and literary Chinese language and philology; cultural history of pre-imperial and early imperial China: ecology and agriculture, natural history, animal studies; food and dietary culture, ritual and religion, economic and political thought; the interplay between moral and material values in Chinese thought. 

Research supervision

Professor Sterckx welcomes MPhil and PhD students interested in Chinese thought and the cultural history of the pre-imperial and early imperial period (Zhou through Han). He is particularly interested in projects that seek to explore perceptions of the natural world and its resources the role of ritual, and the ways in which material values shape ethics, philosophy and political thought. Applicants applying to the PhD program should have an intermediate or advanced proficiency in classical and literary Chinese prior to starting their doctorate. Applicants with little or no prior undergraduate training in a relevant field and/or who require further training in classical Chinese should apply for the MPhil course first. Students wishing to work with Professor Sterckx can be considered for the Louis Cha Scholarship, provided they apply to St John's College.

Professor Hans van de Ven FBA

Research interests

History of the Chinese Communist Party before 1949; the history of warfare in modern China; Chinese globalization in the 1850-1950 period; the Second World War in Asia generally.

Research supervision

Approaching retirement, Professor van de Ven is unfortunately unable to take on any new MPhil or PhD students at Cambridge. Prospective PhD students hoping to work with him might wish to consider applying to the History Department of Peking University, where he continues to teach. 

Ms Hsiaoching Wang

Ms Wang teaches Chinese language at all levels to undergraduates. She does not supervise postgraduate students. Beyond teaching, her academic interests lie in theoretical and experimental linguistics, Chinese linguistics, and Second Language Acquisition, with a particular focus on Chinese L2 pedagogy informed by theoretical linguistic perspectives. 

Ms Emma Wu

Ms Wu teaches Chinese language at all levels to undergraduates. She does not supervise postgraduate students. She is interested in linguistics (comparative and historical), second language acquisition, bilingualism (simultaneous and sequential), Mandarin grammar in L2 education, language teaching pedagogy, consecutive and simultaneous Interpreting, and Translation. In 2014, Ms Wu was named as one of Cambridge's Most Eccentric Professors in The Cambridge Tab.

Dr Yingchuan Yang  

Research interests

History of science and technology; infrastructural studies; sound studies; socialism; Cultural Revolution; urban history; historiography.  

Research supervision

Dr Yang can only consider MPhil applications. He welcomes students interested in all aspects of modern Chinese history, particularly those committed to archival research or whose topics intersect with his research areas.

Dr Victoria Young  

  • Kawashima University Associate Professor in Japanese Literature and Culture  
  • Email: vy202@cam.ac.uk   

Research interests

Modern and contemporary Japanese literature; Okinawan studies; trans-border literature; postcolonial studies; feminist criticism; multilingual writing and translation, critical theory, intersections of literature and history.

Research supervision

Dr Young is pleased to supervise graduate students interested in modern and contemporary Japanese and Okinawan literature, particularly with projects linked to themes and issues of war, imperialism, decolonisation, history and memory, gender and sexuality, multilinguality, and translation.  

Dr Ling Zhang 張玲  

  • University Associate Professor in Classical Chinese and Middle Period China  
  • Email: lz231@cam.ac.uk   

Research interests

Middle-period China; political economy, science and technology, environment and ecology, as well as the relationship between ecology and diverse knowledge systems (official knowledge, vernacular knowledge, embodied know-how, tools and infrastructure, medicine and healing, religious and cultural practices, etc.).  

Research supervision

Dr Zhang is interested in working with postgraduate research students who seek to study premodern China with interests in political economy, science and technology, environment and ecology, as well as the relationship between ecology and diverse knowledge systems (official knowledge, vernacular knowledge, embodied know-how, tools and infrastructure, medicine and healing, religious and cultural practices, etc.). She is also interested in working with students who wish to explore the above-mentioned issues in comparative contexts.

Dr Lucy Xia Zhao

  • University Associate Professor in Chinese Language & Linguistics
  • Email: lz445@cam.ac.uk 

Research interests

Informed by the generative linguistic theory, Dr Zhao’s research aims to gain an understanding of the acquisition process of second language adults and heritage children, with a special focus on the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese. Her current projects investigate the role of the native language, input, nature of the linguistic phenomena, and computational complexity in the development and ultimate attainment of adult second language learners’ grammars of Mandarin Chinese; as well as the developmental trajectory, and the role of parental input and the ‘other’ language(s) in the maintenance and loss of various aspects of heritage Mandarin grammars.

Research supervision

Dr Zhao welcomes MPhil and PhD candidates interested in second/third language acquisition and heritage language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese especially from the perspective of generative linguistics. 


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Postdocs and Affiliated Researchers

Dr Polina Barducci

Research interests

Japanese premodern history; ritual and power symbolism in political and diplomatic relations during the rule of the Ashikaga shogunate (1336–1573); motherhood and child-rearing in the warrior community (15th–16th century); Buddhist manuscript studies, Cambridge Kōfukuji Documents and the history of monastic learning in medieval Buddhist temples (13th–14th century). 

Dr Hajni Elias

  • Affiliated Lecturer in Chinese Art and Material Culture
  • Email: hpe20@cam.ac.uk   

Research interests

Research on Chinese art and material culture spanning from the Bronze Age to the contemporary period, with particular emphasis on the artistic traditions of Southwest China during the early Imperial era and the cultural history of the Southwest Silk Road, encompassing the regions of present-day Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces.  

Dr Rashaad Eshack

Research interests

Rashaad’s research examines migration, education, and citizenship across the modern Japanese world. He focuses on transnational connections between Japan and its overseas communities, exploring how ideas of belonging, identity, and imperial influence circulated across the Pacific. His work contributes to global history, migration studies, and the history of citizenship and education. 

Dr Mina Markovic

Research interests

Modern Japanese history, in particular the political, intellectual, and population history of the nineteenth and twentieth century Japan, as well as the place of Japan in global and transnational history.

Dr David Mozina

Research interests

Living Daoist practice in the PRC and its roots in liturgical debates during the tenth–fifteenth centuries; Daoist and Buddhist practices negotiating the Fengdu underworld; phenomenology and history of ritual, performance theory, theories of healing, and theories of materiality, especially as they illumine the workings of talismans and amulets. 

Dr Avital Rom

Research interests

Early Chinese cultural history and philosophy, with a focus on themes related to music, sound, and silence; historical disability studies and their intersection with sensory history in the early Chinese context (particularly Warring States to the end of the Han, ca. 400 BCE-220 CE).  

Dr Nanase Shirota

Research interests

Dr Shirota’s research examines migration, gender, labour, and communication (particularly listening) in contemporary Japan, with a current focus on transnational Japanese hostesses and the global intersections of gender, race, precarity, affect, and economy. She is also methodologically engaged with ethnography, interviews, and oral history.