• Vormoderne chinesische Philologie
• Geistes- und Institutionengeschichte
• mittelalterliche Geschichte
• Geschlechtergeschichte (Eunuchen)

Akademische Tätigkeit

2019–heute: Professor für Staat und Gesellschaft Chinas, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen Nürnberg

2018–2019: Research Fellow in Chinese Intellectual and Cultural History, ERC-Projekt „PAIXUE: Classicising Learning in Medieval Imperial Systems: Cross-cultural Approaches to Byzantine Paideia and Tang/Song Xue”, University of Edinburgh

2017–2018: Lecturer in East Asian History, History, University of Manchester

2015–2017: Assistant Professor, Department of History, Hong Kong Baptist University

2015–2017: Visiting Research Fellow, History, King’s College London

2014–2015: Postdoctoral Teaching Associate, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge

2013–2015: British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Cambridge (04.–08.2015) und King’s College London (09.2013–03.2015)

2013.04–07: Stipendium des Schneider-Sasakawa Fund der Universität Münster für Forschung am Seikado Bunko 静嘉堂文庫 (Tokyo), Institute for Research in Humanities (Kyoto University) und in Taiwan

2009–2013: Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Exzellenzcluster “Religion und Politik in den Kulturen der Vormoderne und Moderne”, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

2008–2013: Lehrbeauftragter, Institut für Sinologie und Ostasienkunde, Universität Münster

Studium

2013: Promotion (summa cum laude) zum Dr. phil. im Fach Sinologie, Titel der Arbeit: “Li Deyu (787–850). (Zivil-)Religion, Politik und Biographie”, Universität Münster

2009: Magister Artium in Sinologie (Note 1,30), Politikwissenschaft und Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Titel der Arbeit: “Gerechter Krieg und Strafen im Lüshi chunqiu”

2005–2007: Studium des Chinesischen (Mandarin) sowie chinesischer Philosophie und Religion an der Sun Yat-sen University 中山大學 in Guangzhou, VR China.

Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und Sonstiges

• „The Eunuch“. In: Melvyn Bragg – In Our Time. BBC Radio 4. (ausgestrahlt am 26. Februar 2015).

• „Late Medieval Chinese State Religion, Tang through Five Dynasties (755–960): Religion Variables“. In: Database of Religious History . Vancouver: University of British Columbia. (2015)

• „The Battle of Talas“. In: Melvyn Bragg – In Our Time. BBC Radio 4. (ausgestrahlt am 9. Oktober 2014).

• „Den Stier bei den Hörnern packen – Gab es Sumō in der Tang-Zeit?“. In: Jiawu Journal – Festgabe für Professor Reinhard Emmerich. (hausinterne Publikation) University of Muenster. 2014, S. 41–45.

• Wissenschaftliche Buchrezensionen für Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR); Frontiers of History in China, Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of the British Association for Chinese Studies, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Journal of World History, Monumenta Serica, Reviews in History, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung und Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft.

Sino-Medievalism: Translating the Middle Ages in Modern China

The project examines how modern Chinese scholars reimagined the premodern past through “Sino-Medievalism”—the creative adaptation of the European Middle Ages to China. Images of the Chinese and European Middle Ages continue to exert a powerful hold on the Chinese imagination. They trace back to the early twentieth century, when historians began to “medievalize” their premodern history, creating conceptual spaces to rethink modernity, national and cultural identity, and China’s place in the world. The monograph focuses on the key figures and their methodologies during the formative decades of Chinese medieval studies from the 1920s to the 1940s. It combines close readings of medievalist scholarship and its translation, conceptual history, and an analysis of the global discourse of medievalism to take the “medieval” in China beyond the nation-state and issues of periodization. Early-twentieth-century Chinese historians not only viewed the Middle Ages as the cradle of Western nationalism and fundamental to the West’s rise to global dominance, but the concept of the Middle Ages also allowed them to negotiate the tension between universalist models of historical development and the particularities of Chinese history. The monograph treats medieval studies as a global endeavor, while simultaneously highlighting the crucial role of medieval historiography for Chinese modernity. It fills a gap in the historiography of modern China by offering the first systematic account of how scholars reinvented the premodern past and thus revolutionized the concepts of historical time and temporality.