Leadership

Huaiyin Li, PhD (UCLA, 2000), is the Karen and Patrick Walker Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Chinese history. His publications include Village Governance in North China, 1875–1936 (Stanford University Press, 2005), Village China under Socialism and Reform: A Microhistory, 1948–2008 (Stanford University Press, 2009), Reinventing Modern China: Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013), The Making of the Modern Chinese State, 1600–1950 (Routledge, 2020), and The Master in Bondage: Factory Workers in China, 1949–2019 (Stanford University Press, 2023). He also serves as editor of two Brill book series: “Rethinking Socialism and Reform in China” and “Historical Studies of Contemporary China.”

Dr. Chunmei Du 杜春媚 is an associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and was previously an associate professor at Western Kentucky University. With a Ph.D. from Princeton University and a B.A. from Renmin University, she specializes in modern Chinese intellectual and cultural history. Her publications include Everyday Occupation: American Soldiers and Chinese Civilians after World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2025), Gu Hongming’s Eccentric Chinese Odyssey (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), as well as articles in The Journal of Asian Studies, Diplomatic History, Gender & History, and Journal of World History. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Hong Kong Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship Scheme, and Fudan University.

Xiangli Ding is an associate professor of history at the Rhode Island School of Design. He received his PhD from University at Buffalo in 2018. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of environmental, political, and social histories of twentieth century China and East Asia. Having published multiple articles and book reviews in both Chinese and English, his first monograph Hydropower Nation: Dams, Energy, and Political Changes in Twentieth-Century China(2024) features in the Studies of Environment and History series of Cambridge University Press. His current research project is about the environmental and social histories of the Dongting Plain in the central Yangzi basin.

Yi Ren 任一 is a historian of modern China. She received her PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2022 and was an An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University in 2023-24. She was awarded an ACLS Fellowship for 2024-25 and was named the Frederic E. Wakeman, Jr. Fellow in Chinese history for that award year. She is currently Assistant Professor of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Modern China, Twentieth-Century China, and Frontiers of History in China, as well as in edited volumes published by Routledge. She is now completing her first book project, The Making of a Propaganda Society in Rural China, 1938-1976.

Guolin Yi is an Assistant Professor of history at Providence College. Yi’s research interests cut across the fields of history and communication with a focus on the cultural history of modern China, especially the media in the larger context of its interactions with the West. He has published a book The Media and Sino-American Rapprochement: 1963-1972: A Comparative Study (Louisiana State University Press, 2020), which won the 2022 Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences in the United States (ACPSS) Research Award. He has also published in Journal of American-East Asian Relations, American Journalism, Chinese Historical Review, World History Bulletin, and H-Net among others.  Currently he is the Assistant Editor of World History Bulletin and a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.

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Dr. Aihua Zhang is an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Gardner-Webb University in North Carolina. She received her PhD in history from Stony Brook University. Her teaching and research interests encompass modern China, women and gender studies, urban and cultural history, social activism, and transnationalism. She is the author of The Beijing Young Women’s Christian Association, 1927–1937 (Bloomsbury, 2021). Also, she contributed a chapter to the edited volume titled Christianity and the Modern Woman in East Asia (Brill, 2018). Her articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Women’s History Review, American Journal of Chinese Studies, and World Leisure Journal. She is currently working on Chinese women’s oral histories and the experience of Christian women’s singlehood.