Education:

PhD, Cambridge University, 2009

 
Fields of Interests:

Environmental, economic, and political history of China; Chinese middle period; comparative history of water and rivers; landscape studies; historical geography; environmental ethics and environmental justice

 
Academic Profile:

Professor Zhang studies the environmental, economic, and political history of pre-modern China. Her current research interests focus on the environmental and ecological history of the Yellow River, and the comparative history of rivers in traditional agrarian societies in Asia. She has finished a book manuscript that is entitled The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental and Economic History of Hebei, 1048-1128. She is now working on another book project, temporarily entitled "China's sorrow or the Yellow River's sorrow? An environmental history of the Yellow River." This study tells the story of the life and death of this particular river, and addresses the emotions of this organic entity -- its sorrow and anger -- during its thousands-of-years struggles against human domination and for power, space, and freedom. Before joining BC, Professor Zhang was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University, a Ziff Environmental Fellow in the Center for the Environment at Harvard University. She was an assistant professor in Chinese Studies at Newcastle University (UK) and a past recipient of the Chiang Ching-Kuo International Exchange Fundation Dissertation Fellowship and the Benefactors' Scholarship of St John's College, Cambridge. Professor Zhang will teach two sets of courses: various courses on pre-modern Chinese history and theoretical and comparative courses on environmental history.